Making Data Banks More Useful with Knowledge-Embedded Data-Base Systems

The focus of the present paper is on the data-knowledge integration problem, whereby data and knowledge can be made radically more useful within the same framework. Most tools for developing knowledge-based systems do not integrate well with data bases. This lack of integration is usually hampered by slow data base queries or by overly limited data base interfaces. On the other hand, since data base management systems are already well developed, leveraging knowledge-based systems with data base management systems would provide significant advantages like speed, security, and portability across data formats (e.g. easy conversion between dBase and ASCII formats). In the present paper, we describe a novel approach to the data-knowledge integration problem. This approach entails the simple but powerful extension of a data base system to increase its ability to represent and manipulate knowledge. We describe Kbase, an environment for developing knowledge-based systems using facilities and extended constructs of the familiar dBase III data base programming environment. At the end, we use an implemented example, IPDOS, to support our hypothesis.