Intelligent database retrieval by visual reasoning

The authors introduce the concept of personalized user profile for very large databases, as well as the VisualNet model as a representation for such a user profile. A user profile is a small and dynamic structure which contains the user´s knowledge of the database, serves as a starting point for the user´s access to the database, and supports intelligent database accesses. The basic idea is that a user usually accesses only a very small and stable region of a very large database, and therefore, the size of the user profile is much smaller than the whole database view. It is hoped that most of the user´s database search can be conducted in the user profile. Techniques for automatic construction and maintenance of user profiles are discussed. A set of visual reasoning algorithms is presented to support intelligent and interactive user´s queries to the database, as well as to coordinate the search between the user profile and the global database