INTELLIGENT DATABASE

Assignment
Database Technologies
Term Autumn/2008

Thileepan Sivanantham
PG Diploma in Computing
University of Buckingham
 Abstract:
The purpose of this essay is to submit the result, which I got through the minor research on Intelligent
Databases as my coursework for Database Technologies module. The purpose of this research was to get basic
ideas of the intelligent database and its characteristics. Particularly I have focused on the functionalities and
special characteristics of the intelligent databases, current trend, and architecture of the intelligent databases.
As well as I tried to predict how would intelligent databases be in the future. I referred books and Internet in
order to do the research.

I found a truth in the research that the Intelligent Databases area in computing still under researching. People
well understood and welcomed this kind of database theoretically. Unfortunately, there are no much
commercial products of intelligent databases in the software market for their use. However, the need for the
intelligent databases is being increased rapidly because of the more information-oriented world. Specially,
nowadays, people, who are working with multimedia information, are longing for a database system with
enough intelligent like intelligent database.

Although the intelligent databases now are not widely used, it is oblivious that within few years the modern
information world will be depending on the intelligent databases.
 Introduction
In the modern and globalize business industries, market operators compete in process and innovation rather
than in products. This factor urged companies to shift from being product-oriented to knowledge – oriented.
They are also giving more priority to production process itself and services rather than quality and quantity of
production. In order to increase their performance significantly, all companies have to possess a huge amount
of information with them and they are maintaining the information as a biggest asset of theirs. The success of
the business industries nowadays is depends on the availability of information that they have.

Not only business but also all others, such as law enforcement agencies, governments, academic institutions
and non-profitable organizations, have to utilize a large amount of information in order to perform their duties
effectively in higher level.

In the computerized world, people, who are involved with the organizations mentioned above, are using
electronic databases with Information System to store and process data as well as information for their business
and individual purposes.

Before the database system was introduced, people had been using file sequential processing system to store
their data in magnetic tapes for the same purposes. Initially, this was developed in the mainframe environment
in the early 1960s and then they applied to numeric and record based data, such as employees’ records and
department records so on, in industries. Although the file processing system had many drawbacks, it was the
valuable gift for the people who wanted to maintain huge amount of data easily and effectively before the latest
computer technology had been introduced.

Growth of Database Technology:

However, as the people’s needs were increased and computers became cost effective tool along with increased
storage capacity, the computer experts were forced to introduce new technologies in data storing all the times.
The database technologies are still changing according to the new world trend and new technologies. I would
like to mention here that the term “database technology” does not have the same meaning as “database
model”. The database model is the structure to represent the data. In contrast database technology is a
technique in the architecture of a database. The following subsection is presenting about small history of the
growth of the database technology.

In the early 1970s, online information systems became available and they dealt with textual databases. After the
invention of online information systems, the expert systems were developed in the mid-1970s and at the same
period object-oriented programming techniques grew out of work in software engineering, user interfaces and
high level programming languages. Finally a system was introduced with capabilities to deal with hypermedia
information such as text, sound and images. Those systems were called as practical hypermedia systems.

All these technologies were treated in isolation and very few technologies were only weekly linked to others
until a new technology called INTELLIGENT DATABASE was introduced in 1980s for integrating diverse
technologies and approaches. The rest of the article is going to talk about intelligent database. As our lecturer
Mr. Hongbo Du said once, when I asked some doubts on intelligent database, it is a broad area to learn and
think about.
However, my aim here is not to explain everything in Intelligent Databases deeply. In contrast, I am going to
do minor research on intelligent databases and share with you overall ideas on them. Each section below is
going to be structured as follows.

1. Intelligent.
2. Origin of the Intelligent Databases
3. Definition to an Intelligent Database
4. Differences between Traditional and Intelligent Databases
5. Ideal Characteristic of Intelligent Databases
6. Architecture of Intelligent Database
7. Current Trend for Intelligent Databases
8. Intelligent Databases in Future
9. Challenges in Intelligent Databases
10. Conclusion
 Intelligent:
The general definitions for the word “Intelligent” in English cannot be credibly applied to even the most
advanced machine intelligences currently available. So, when I seek for the exact definition for the Intelligent
Databases, I met two statements, which was stated by two computing professionals Minsky and Eysenck [W2],
about “Artificial Intelligence”. Those let people to derive exact definition for the Intelligent Databases.

Minsky defines artificial intelligence as “The science of making machines do things that would require
intelligence if done by men” while Eysenck gives people a way forward into domain of intelligent databases
with the statement, “Artificial intelligence is concerned with the attempt to develop complex computer
programs that will be capable of performing difficult cognitive tasks [W2]. Recent writers in these fields
pointed out that the Intelligent Database Systems (IDBS) is combination of database technologies and the
techniques developed in the field of artificial intelligent. Personally, I also feel that this definition gives most
appropriate for intelligent databases.

However, there are many simplistic definitions. For example, the World Wide Web reference
techEncyclopeadia describes an intelligent database as “a database that contains knowledge about the content
of its data and set of validation criteria are stored with each field of data, such as the minimum and maximum
values that can be entered or a list of all possible entries”

Origin of the Intelligent Databases:

The concept for an intelligent database has emerged in the late 1980’s as a system that manages information
with its natural format. The intelligent database concept goes beyond the simple record keeping traditional
databases. In 1989, Kamran Parsaye, Mark Chignell, Setrag Khoshsfian and Harry Wong introduced the term
Intelligent Database in their book named “Intelligent Database” [w1].

Definition to an Intelligent Database:

Intelligent database is a kind of databases for data management. It has the capability to store compiled
documents and other information in the form of a database. The documents, stored in an intelligent database,
are viewable online on the client machine, print details as a hardcopy and download documents from the
database directly.

Different between Traditional and Intelligent Databases:

Although there are many different traditional and intelligent databases, the most significant aspect of the
intelligent databases, that differentiates the intelligent database, is Artificial Intelligence (AI). The traditional
databases are using keyword and logical operators, such as NOT, AND, and OR, to return data which users
want to extract from a database. These databases are unintelligent. It does not process anything other than just
comparing data with key and return them back to use along with other data management utilities such as
recovery control, concurrency control so on. In contrast, the intelligent databases are interacting users through
Artificial Intelligence in order to ensure that the returned item that contains the most relevant and more
meaningful information which user actually wanted to access. In addition to these, these databases provide
expanded and more flexible query options to users to form queries.

Not like queries in traditional databases, in intelligent databases users can just type their queries as full sentence
in plain English and then the intelligent databases use Artificial Intelligence to analysis the query, it will correct
spelling mistakes if users made in their queries and return list of most suitable, useful and sorted answers
highest to lower. Users can ask more specific questions if they have not satisfied with given answer from the
database. They can alter their previous query until they satisfy themselves with the answer.

Some intelligent database product return items with similar or opposite meanings for users’ keywords and
phrases. Moreover, since the intelligent database can provide history of searched recently made by users, users
can just use or alter the previous queries rather than write new query if they want to work with the same topic
more.

Followings are the basic characteristics generally expected to be included in the intelligent databases
additionally than the traditional databases have as the users requirements are increased and forced computer
professions to think about an intelligent system for data management.
 1. Database with high-level tools allow users to both extract knowledge from and apply knowledge to
data. High-level tools support for data analysis, discovery and integrity control.
2. Database that allows users to interact directly with information as naturally as, like talking to an expert
on a particular topic.
3. Database that helps user to determine what they need to know.

Ideal Characteristics of Intelligent Databases

Although each one has different ideas on this matter, I strongly believe that the integration of more recently
modern techniques in the databases are integrated in the intelligent databases. Multimedia databases, Object-
Oriented databases, Web databases are the examples for the different type of databases and they are using
unique database technologies. “Unique database technologies” means that each one has different database
technology. For example; in the multimedia databases, the intelligent query processing method is used to
retrieve data from the database but they are still using relational data model to represent data. In contrast, the
Object-Oriented databases store data as an object but they are still using extended unintelligent query
processing method.

Fortunately, the intelligent databases integrate Object-Oriented concept, Expert System concept, Multimedia
(Hypermedia) concept and Online Information Retrieval concept. The following several paragraphs describe
how the intelligent databases integrate those techniques in the databases.

The most powerful and important feature that is incorporated in the intelligent databases is object orientation.
As all of you know, the object oriented is the famous and latest model among the database models and it is
widely agreed as a more valuable in database field. The intelligent databases use object orientation to closely
resemble the user’s model of the real world.

The expert system is making databases more intelligent. The expert system is a system which generally reasons
and arrives at conclusions based on the knowledge it possesses. It is integrated with intelligent databases
through its higher level programming capabilities and knowledge representation formalism. Expert system
technology in the intelligent databases allows users to manipulate the semantics of the database directly. More
over, because the intelligent databases use facts, rules, objects and inference engines as basic tools for
knowledge representation and inference in the intelligent databases, the expert systems also help to build more
advanced system for text interpretation and retrieval that intelligent databases required.

Hypermedia, in intelligent database, is combination of information, which could be represented in different

types such as graphics, sound and text, and the methods for storing and retrieving them. Hypermedia is also
used as a user interface to the powerful information management capability available in the intelligent
databases.

Architecture of Intelligent Database

I am going to explain briefly the basic architecture of intelligent databases proposed initially by Kamaran
Parsaye and his group in the book “Intelligent Databases” some years ago. Although this idea for the
architecture was proposed in late 1980s, it is still remaining as a untouchable area by anyone and no latest
architecture has been introduced in after that.

Intelligent database is three levels architecture. The levels are named as follows. High Level Tools, High Level
User Interface and Intelligent Database Engine.

As figure: 1 illustrated below, each level in the architecture has its own tools and functions. Generally, the end
users of the system deal with High Level Tools and High Level User Interface levels while Developers are
contacting with Intelligent Database Engine level along with High Level User Interface. Moreover, users and
developers can access layers independently.
 End Users
Knowledge Discovery
Data Integrity & Quality Control
Hypermedia Management
High Level Tools Tools Data Preparation & Display
Decision Support & Scenario analysis
Data Format Management
High Level User Interface Intelligent System Design Tools

Complier/Optimiser
Intelligent Database Engine Components Rule Manager
Explanation Manager
Transaction Manager
Meta-data Manager
Access Module
Developers Multi-Media Manager
Memory Manager

Figure :1 The top level architecture of an intelligent database.

 High level tools

This level enables for intelligent searching, integrity controls, data quality and automated discovery. As you can
see in the figure 1, the level provides a toolbox with distinct tools. All the tools in this level are not useful at all
the times. However, users can choose any tool based on their requirements. The tools and their purposes in
this level are given below.
 Knowledge discovery tools.
This tool is responsible for data analysis, machine learning and statistical analysis and allows users to extract
knowledge from data. For example, on a database of large supermarket, the marketing department discovered
that a large number of sales were due to the first day of the new term for school students. Thus, these tools
discover relationships that users would not have even expected.

 Data integrity and quality control tools.

As its name implies, the tool is used in order to maintain quality and integrity of data in the database through
detecting or signaling errors in the database if they occurred.

 Hypermedia management tools.

This provides methods to users and developers for organizing and accessing different forms of information
such as text, sound and images on the databases.

 Data presentation and display tools.

It provides graphics, forms and other types of data presentation and allows users to display summarized
records attractively.

 Decision support and scenario analysis tools

This enables decision support activities through allowing a uniform merger between different application such
as spreadsheets, databases, financial modeling system and so on.

 Data format management tools

Users can use the data format management tools to transform a data in a format into another format. For
example, the data are stored dBase and DB2 with different formats. It is easy to use this tool to merge those
data with different formats.

 Intelligent system design tools.

Provide facilities to design a intelligent database through integrating database designing, information system
designing and expert system designing. Moreover, these tools allow administrator to maintain intelligent
database efficiently.

 High level user interface

This is the interface level where users directly interact with database. In addition to incorporate(incorporating )
hypermedia information, it provides some associated tools to enhance the functionality of the intelligent
database. It provides users with some tools for browsing, querying and searching on hypermedia information.
The functionalities are much depends on the intelligence and naturalness of the user interface level. The core
user-interface model and set of high level tools provide these functionalities of the intelligent databases.
Because I have already mentioned about high-level tools in the previous section, I am going to mention about
core user-interface model here.

The core user-interface model consists of objects and entire functionalities of the database proceeds from this
model. The object can have its own methods or inherit from other classes. All classes and objects may be
linked with other classes and objects as a network. The diagram below explains how classes and objects are
linked.

Class A Class B
Methods: Methods:
Attributes: Attributes:
Objects are
Instantiated
from classes

Object 1 Object 2 Object n

Class: Linked Class: Linked Class:
Methods: Methods: Methods:
Attributes: Attributes: Attributes:

Operations Functionalities

User Interface

Figure 2: User Interface Core Model in Intelligent Databases

Users generally interact with the “network core user-interface models” through movement and navigation. At
each point when the user interacts with the database, he or she is at a particular object. From that object where
the user at, if the user wants, he or she can do followings
 Move to different object from the current one
 Get more information on the current object
 Modify the current object
 Take notes on the current object
 Transfer information from the current object to personal database
 Answer a question related with the current object.

 Intelligent database engine

Intelligent database engine level incorporates the model that allow for deductive object-oriented representation
of information. The FORM models are generally used in the intelligent databases. (See appendix – A). As I
mentioned in the figure 1, this level has seven major components.

 Rule Manager:
The component Rule Manager in the intelligent database engine level is responsible to encapsulate the
algorithms, which are used to perform searching based on IF-THEN condition methods.

 Compiler/Optimizer:
The Compiler\Optimizer module is using metadata (Physically stored data about data) and rule manager as well
to optimize intelligent database programs into internal codes.

 Explanation Manager:
The Rule Manager sends details about search which is performed by the rule manager itself, to the Explanation
Manager and Explanation Manager sores them in data structures to give details back if users request
explanation on goals that succeed or not.

 Transaction Manager:
This is controlling the database transaction such as concurrency, recovery and ensuring atomicity. Algorithms,
that are used to perform transactions in the intelligent databases are encapsulated by transaction manager.

 Meta-data Manager:
As its name implies it is managing metadata of the intelligent databases. Metadata includes schema, inheritance
hierarchies, methods and operators of the classes, and access method information associated with class
instances.

 Access Module:
It contains access method codes to search records, images and long text data. In addition to access method
codes, it contains clustering algorithms to perform search on complex objects.

 Multi-Media Manager:
The Multi-Media Manager incorporates routines to manage peripheral devices. Moreover, it uses special
algorithms to allocate sectors on the disk for more efficient storage utilization.

 Memory Manager:
In addition to perform cashing of persistent database object, the memory manager allocates memory for other
modules.

Intelligence at these three levels, high level tools, high level user interfaces and intelligent database engine,
makes a database intelligent.

Current Trend of Intelligent Databases

I think it is better to explain the capability of the current intelligent databases through few samples. I found
few intelligent databases, which are used by few people currently. Since the most considerable characteristic of
the intelligent databases is searching for natural information, I am going to concentrate on searching
mechanism particularly of those databases.

In DowQuest when users request for natural information, DowQuest asks user to input important words,
phrases or sample documents of the related information, which they want to get from the database, in order to
create a profile of the desired information. DowQuest analysis each word in the documents in its database and
eliminates unwanted texts (eg: “the”, “of” “a” etc) and DowQuest creates its own profile. The first hundred
most frequent occurring words in the document are chosen for creating its profile. Finally, both profiles are
compared to produce results back to the user. The following are steps and methods, which are used by
Dowquest to compare both profiles.
1. Coemparing word occurrences
2. Combining scores for different words
3. Normalizing scores based on size of the document and length of query
4. Sorting documents and displaying headlines by their scores

If user is not satisfied with the result the DowQuest provides user some hints and allows them to alter the
profile to search again. In contrast, if the user is satisfied with a particular document in the result at least, he or
she can use the document as feedback to the database to improve profile and narrow search.

Another example for intelligent databases is Topic. Topic uses structured approach called concept hierarchies
for searching. Concept hierarchy means that defining a concept or topic by using its components and details.
Basically, the Topic intelligent databases build a topic and defines concept on it by using other topics and
pattern of words. In addition to that, it will use details of the topic in term of specific words, Boolean
connectivities and weights or relevance factors.
As I mentioned above, there are very few intelligent databases are in use currently. However, it is not possible
to say that the available intelligent databases use the entire concept proposed for intelligent databases. In my
point of view, it is very difficult to predict about intelligent databases in future. Because, although I tried my
best, I could not find single evident for the future of intelligent databases particularly.

There is another intelligent database product called Smart Medical Database (SMDB) developed by Xoetronics.
SMDB is used specially in the medical field. It is using inductive logic to produce database. The database is
dynamic and able to interact in real time. It designed specially for doctors and helps them to compare treatment
choices and relative outcomes for huge number of patients. It has integrated artificial intelligent tool and
special kind of probability statistics method (called Bayesian) to seek information from a wide range of
information which are statically significant relevant to the case which we want to know about. For example, a
doctor can derive case information of a particular patient from the wide range of statically significant relevant
patient cases. In the medical field, the SMDB identifies diagnoses through probability of correctness functions
bases on huge amount of available accumulated data and the subsequent medical data of a particular patient is
used to refine the diagnosis and that updated data is added to the database again for the future use.

Intelligent Databases in Future:

This is a multimedia era. The convergence of media and information technology is developing rapidly. It needs
new concepts in information storage. It wants a new data storage system to store and retrieve new type of data,
both structured and unstructured. They expect that the new system must understand the information
framework that it manages and the context of the source and destination. People who are working in this field
feel that the Intelligent Database concept is most suitable for them. So definitely, it is going to increase the
demand for the intelligent databases in the near future.

Today, big companies are storing their huge amount of customers details and analysis them for the marketing
purpose. Currently they are using some techniques such as data mining to do their job. Most of the companies
are thinking about to use intelligent databases for this purpose now. So it may increase the popularity for the
intelligent databases in future.

Challenges in Intelligent Databases:

We must always be clear on the fact that the computer is an electronic machine and it cannot act with more
intelligence than what human beings have. Specifically, computers have problems with ambiguous of words;
because one word can have multiple meanings in the current life.

I have no hesitation to state that the intelligent databases make our life easy. However there are some
constraints that we have to consider on the intelligent databases. Although the intelligent databases use
Artificial Intelligence for analyzing and processing, users must create queries with forethought and queries must
be meaningful to ensure the most useful returned information from the database. Otherwise the output result
would be incorrect. For example, a user might type, “Which product is mostly sold in this month?” the system
will return an answer depending on how it understands the question. If user is not satisfied with the answer he
or she has no way other than alter the query and try again.

Intelligent databases are not widely spread yet and these are still in developing stage. As a result there are no
much commercial intelligent database managements systems in software markets with the original concepts.
This is the significant reason I think not to computing users are not familiar with the intelligent databases.

Conclusion:
General purpose of Intelligent Databases has not been widely needed yet, although many of the advantages in
them are well understood. Consequently, we do not yet have the same level of experience in industry as we
have with traditional databases.

However, I have no hesitation to state that the needs for the intelligent databases must not be neglected in the
near future. Theoretically, the concept for the intelligent databases is best among the all other database
technologies. It is obvious that the all the concept for the intelligent database cannot be enforced practically. I
am much sure on saying that future database industry is going to be attracted by the intelligent databases.
Personally, I think that the reason for the inadequate availability of the commercial intelligent databases is, the
users do not care about the advantages in the intelligent database just because there are no enough intelligent
database systems in the market.

Reference List:

[B1]. Kamran Parsaye, Mark Chignell, Setrag Khoshafian, and Harry Wong, “Intelligent Databases” Chapter
1,7, John Wiley and Sons, 1989

[w1]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Database

[W2]. Lee Jorgensen Jan 2003, “Artificial Intelligent : Intelligent Databases”

http://www.akri.org/ai/intdata.htm
[W3]. https://www.msu.edu/~sleightd/Inteldat.html

[w4]. http://www.akri.org/ai/intdata.htm

Appendix:
A. Formal Object Representation Model (FORM):
The FORM is generally used as model for the intelligent databases. The basic structuring concept in FORM is
an object. FORM object generally correspond to objects within an object-oriented system or elements within a
hypermedia system. FORM object have attributes that are generally characterized according to the context in
which the object appears. Attributes appear as slots in frames, attributes in objects, fields in relations.
Keywords in text fragments, and label or tags in diagrams, pictures, etc [B1 Pages 373-374]