Handling Possibly Conflicting Preferences.
Radim Nedbal · Padua Research Archive (University of Padova) · 2011
There is a need for handling preferences in relational query languages that arises naturally in real-world applications dealing with possible choices generated by the current state of the world captured in the relational data model. To address this problem, we propose a fully declarative language for encoding preferences conditional on the current state of the world represented as a relation database instance. The language has constructs for various kinds of preferences, and we show how to interpret (sets of) its formulae; even sets of formulae that encode conflicting preferences. This leads to a flexible approach for specifying the most desirable choices of autonomous systems that act on behalf of their designers. Throughout the paper, we use an example of a control support system for a bank surveillance to motivate the need for our framework and to illustrate it.