Personalized DBMS: an Elephant in Disguise or a Chameleon?
Georgia Koutrika · 2011
A query, expressed in a structured query language such as SQL, describes precisely the data that should comprise the answer and a non-empty answer is returned only if it satisfies all query criteria. However, the Boolean database query model has limitations. A user may run into empty answers when the query conditions are too restrictive or sift through too many results that match the query. User preferences naturally blend into queries allowing to explore alternatives or prioritize and filter available choices. In addition, they can be used to generate answers that are personalized to the user. In this paper, we explain the need towards personalized and preference-aware query answering in the context of databases and we discuss how it can be enabled. Our objective is to discuss the pros and cons of existing approaches and the challenges and opportunities towards a truly personalized preference-aware DBMS. 1