Intensional Encapsulations of Database Subsets via Genetic Programming

Finding intensional encapsulations of database subsets is the inverse of query evaluation. Whereas query evaluation transforms an intensional expression (the query) to its extension (a set of data values), intensional encapsulation assigns an intensional expression to a given set of data values. We describe a method for deriving intensional representations of subsets of records in large database tables. Our method is based on the paradigm of genetic programming. It is shown to achieve high accuracy and maintain compact expression size, while requiring cost that is acceptable to all applications, but those that require instantaneous results. Intensional encapsulation has a broad range of applications including cooperative answering, information integration, security and data mining.