Fuzzy and Probabilistic Object-Oriented Databases

Abstract

For modeling real-world problems and constructing intelligent systems, integration of different methodologies and techniques has been the quest and focus of significant interdisciplinary research effort. The advantages of such a hybrid system are that the strengths of its partners are combined and complementary to each other’s weakness. In particular, object orientation provides a hierarchical data abstraction scheme and a mechanism for information hiding and inheritance. However, the classical object-oriented data model cannot deal with uncertainty and imprecision pervasive in real world problems. Meanwhile, probability theory and fuzzy logic provide measures and rules for representing and reasoning with uncertainty and imprecision. That has led to intensive research and development of fuzzy and probabilistic object-oriented databases, as collectively reported in De Caluwe (1997), Ma (2005), and Marín & Vila (2007).