This work proposes an axiomatic characterization of merging operators. It underlines the differences between arbitration operators and majority operators. A representation theorem is stated showing that each merging operator corresponds to a family of partial preorders on interpretations. Examples of operators are given. They show the consistency of the axiomatic characterization. A new merging operator 4GMax is provided. It is proved that it is actually an arbitration operator. 1 Introduction In a growing number of applications, we face conflicting information coming from several sources. The problem is to reach a coherent piece of information from these contradicting ones. A lot of different merging methods have already been given [BI84, LMa, BKM91, BKMS92, Sub94]. Instead of giving one particular merging method we propose, in this paper, a characterization of such methods following the rationality of the postulates they satisfy. We shall call merging operators those meth...

We consider the problem of merging several belief bases in the presence of integrity constraints.

: Revision and update operators add new information to some old information represented by a logical theory. Katsuno and Mendelzon show that both revision and update operators can be characterized as accomplishing a minimal change in the old information to accommodate the new information. Arbitration operators add two or more weighted informations together where the weights indicate the relative importance of the informations rather than a strict priority. This paper shows that arbitration operators can be also characterized as accomplishing a minimal change. The operator of model-fitting is also defined and analyzed in the paper. 1 Introduction Arbitration is the process of settling a conflict between two or more persons. Arbitration occurs in many situations. For example, settling a labor dispute by an outsider, reaching a verdict in a trial, evaluating several alternative research hypotheses, negotiating an international peace agreement, or setting the price of a product in a compe...

. At a workshop held in Toulouse, France in 1977, Gallaire, Minker and Nicolas stated that logic and databases was a field in its own right (see [131]). This was the first time that this designation was made. The impetus for this started approximately twenty years ago in 1976 when I visited Gallaire and Nicolas in Toulouse, France, which culminated in a workshop held in Toulouse, France in 1977. It is appropriate, then to provide an assessment as to what has been achieved in the twenty years since the field started as a distinct discipline. In this retrospective I shall review developments that have taken place in the field, assess the contributions that have been made, consider the status of implementations of deductive databases and discuss the future of work in this area. 1 Introduction As described in [234], the use of logic and deduction in databases started in the late 1960s. Prominent among the developments was the work by Levien and Maron [202, 203, 199, 200, 201] and Kuhns [1...

We consider, in this paper, the problem of knowledge base merging with integrity constraints. We propose a logical characterization of those operators and give a representation theorem in terms of preorders on interpretations. We show the close connection between belief revision and merging operators and we show that our proposal extends the pure merging case (i.e. without integrity constraints) we study in a previous work. Finally we show that Liberatore and Schaerf commutative revision operators can be seen as a special case of merging.

We investigate the logical properties of knowledge base combination operators proposed in the literature. These operators are based on the selection of some maximal subsets of the union of the knowledge bases. We argue that they are not fully satisfactory to merge knowledge bases, since the source of information is lost in the combination process. We show that it is the reason why those operators do not satisfy a lot of logical properties. Then we propose to use more rened selection mechanisms in order to take the distribution of information into account in the combination process. That allows to dene merging operators with a more subtle behaviour. 1 INTRODUCTION In the elds of articial intelligence and databases, one is often faced with conicting information coming from several sources. Thus, an important problem in such cases is how to reach a coherent piece of information from these contradictory ones. For example, if one wants to build an expert system from a ...

A relational database is inconsistent if it does not satisfy a given set of integrity constraints. Nevertheless, it is likely that most of the data in it is consistent with the constraints. In this paper we apply logic programming based on answer sets to the problem of retrieving consistent information from a possibly inconsistent database. Since consistent information persists from the original database to every of its minimal repairs, the approach is based on a specification of database repairs using disjunctive logic programs with exceptions, whose answer set semantics can be represented and computed by systems that implement stable model semantics. These programs allow us to declare persistence by default of data from the original instance to the repairs; and changes to restore consistency, by exceptions. We concentrate mainly on logic programs for binary integrity constraints, among which we find most of the integrity constraints found in practice.

this paper. Similarly, we have shown that integrity constraints can apply to temporal conditions, but that there is no one uniform approach to handling temporal databases. Many areas of the use of integrity constraints still need investigating. Below, we discuss some aspects associated with this topic that require additional work. ffl Implement semantic query optimization and cooperative answering systems. Current relational and deductive database systems do not provide these capabilities, but the current 30 April 1997 ICs: Semantics and Applications---Godfrey, Grant, Gryz, & Minker p. 36 of 46 standards for SQL provide for the incorporation of some aspects of integrity constraints.

Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) is an active research area with the promise for a high payoff in many business and scientific applications. The grand challenge of knowledge discovery in databases is to automatically process large quantities of raw data, identify the most significant and meaningful patterns, and present this knowledge in an appropriate form for achieving the user's goal. Knowledge discovery systems face challenging problems from the real-world databases which tend to be very large, redundant, noisy and dynamic. Each of these problems has been addressed to some extent within machine learning, but few, if any, systems address them all. Collectively handling these problems while producing useful knowledge efficiently and effectively is the main focus of the thesis. In this thesis, we develop an attribute-oriented rough set approach for knowledge discovery in databases. The method adopts the artificial intelligent "learning from examples" paradigm combined with rough...

. Information fusion is the process of deriving a single consistent knowledgebase from multiple knowledgebases. This process is important in many cognitive tasks such as decision-making, planning, design, and specification, that can involve collecting information from a number of potentially conflicting perspectives or sources, or participants. In this brief overview, we focus on the problem of inconsistencies arising in information fusion. In the following, we consider reasoning with inconsistencies, acting on inconsistencies, and resolving inconsistencies. 1 Introduction Many tasks that an intelligent agent performs such as decision-making, planning, design, and specification, often involve collecting information from a number of potentially conflicting perspectives or sources, or participants with different views, and forming a single combined view or perspective --- a synthesis, or consensus. Consider requirements engineering. The development of most large and complex systems nece...