AN APPROACH TO EMBED KNOWLEDGE IN DATABASE-SYSTEMS

Most tools for developing knowledge-based systems do not integrate well with databases. This lack of integration is hampered by slow database queries or by overly limited database interfaces. This paper describes a novel approach to the knowledge-data integration problem by embedding knowledge directly into the database systems. This approach entails the simple but powerful extension of a database system to increase its ability to represent and manipulate knowledge. A description is given of KBase, an environment for embedding knowledge in databases using facilities and extended constructs of the familiar dBase database programming environment. At the end, the applicability of the approach is illustrated with a developmental prototype, CICONSA, for scheduling construction projects.