Frame-Based Approach To Database Management
R. S. Voros, D. J. Hillman, D.R. Decker, Glenn David Blank · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1989
Practical knowledge-based systems need to reason in terms of knowledge that is already available in databases. This type of knowledge is usually represented as tables acquired from external databases and published reports. Knowledge based systems provide a means for reasoning about entities at a higher level of abstraction. What is needed in many of today's expert systems is a link between the knowledge base and external databases. One such approach is a frame-based database management system. Package Expert (PEx) designs packages for integrated circuits. The thrust of our work is to bring together diverse technologies, data and design knowledge in a coherent system. PEx uses design rules to reason about properties of chips and potential packages, including dimensions, possible materials and packaging requirements. This information is available in existing databases. PEx needs to deal with the following types of information consistently: material databases which are in several formats; technology databases, also in several formats; and parts files which contain dimensional information. It is inefficient and inelegant to have rules access the database directly. Instead, PEx uses a frame-based hierarchical knowledge management approach to databases. Frames serve as the interface between rule-based knowledge and databases. We describe PEx and the use of frames in database retrieval. We first give an overview and the design evolution of the expert system. Next, we describe the system implementation. Finally, we describe how the rules in the expert system access the databases via frames.