Intelligent Database Design Diagnosis: Performance Assessment with the Provision of Domain Knowledge

Techniques for representing and exploitingdomain knowledge (such as the dictionary,thesaurus and knowledge reconciliationtechniques) have long been used by intelligentdatabase design tools when performing the taskof design synthesis. However, the capacity ofthese techniques to enhance the diagnosticcapabilities of intelligent database designtools has yet to be explored and evaluated.This paper presents such an evaluation,focusing upon the aforementioned techniques ofdictionary, thesaurus and knowledgereconciliation. Results obtained from thisinvestigation suggest that use of thesetechniques has the potential to increase thediagnostic capabilities of intelligent databasedesign tools by facilitating detection andresolution of design inconsistencies that wouldremain undiscovered in situations where suchsystem-held domain knowledge was not available.