Summary: Context in Information Bases
Manos Theodorakis 1;2 , Anastasia Analyti 1 , Panos Constantopoulos 1;2 , Nikos Spyratos 3
1 Institute of Computer Science, FORTH, P.O.Box 1385, GR 711 10 Heraklion, Crete, Greece
2 Department of Computer Science, University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece
3 Universit’ e de Paris­Sud, LRI­Bat 490, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France
E­mail: fetheodor j analyti j panosg@ics.forth.gr, spyratos@lri.fr
Abstract
Although semantic data models provide expressive concep­
tual modeling mechanisms, they do not support context, i.e.
providing controlled partial information on conceptual enti­
ties by viewing them from different viewpoints or in different
situations. In this paper, we present a model for representing
contexts in information bases along with a set of operations
for manipulating contexts. These operations support cre­
ating, updating, combining, and comparing contexts. Our
model contributes to the efficient handling of information,
especially in distributed, cooperative environments, as it
enables (i) representing (possibly overlapping) partitions
of an information base; (ii) partial representations of ob­
jects, (iii) flexible naming (e.g. relative names, synonyms

Source: Analyti, Anastasia - Institute of Computer Science, Foundation of Research and Technology, Hellas

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences