Authors: Michael Lloyd-Williams, Shahrul Azman Noah
Tags: 1998, conceptual modeling
Recent years have seen the development of a number of expert system type tools whose primary objective is to provide support to a human during the process of database analysis and design. However, whereas human designers are able to draw upon their experience and knowledge of the real world when performing such a task, knowledge-based database design tools are generally unable to do so. This has resulted in numerous calls for the development of tools that are capable of exploiting real-world knowledge during a design session. It has been claimed that the use of such knowledge has the potential to increase the appearance of intelligence of the tools, to improve the quality of the designs produced, and to increase processing efficiency. However to date, little if any formal evaluation of these claims has taken place. This paper presents such an evaluation of two of the approaches proposed to facilitate system-storage and exploitation of real-world knowledge; the thesaurus approach and the knowledge reconciliation approach. Results obtained have demonstrated that certain aspects of the claimed benefits associated with the use of real-world knowledge have been achieved. However, the extent to which these benefits have been attained and subsequently statistically validated varies.Read the full paper here: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-49524-6_17
