Knowledge-Based Approaches to Database Design

Database design is often described as an intuitive, even artistic, process. Many researchers, however, are currently working on applying techniques from artificial intelligence to provide effective automated assistance for this task. This article presents a summary of the current state of the art for the benefit of future researchers and users of this technology. Thirteen examples of knowledge-based tools for database design are briefly described and then compared in terms of the source, content, and structure of their knowledge bases; the amount of support they provide to the human designer; the data models and phases of the design process they support; and the capabilities they expect of their users. The finding show that there has apparently been very little empirical verification of the effectiveness of these systems. In addition, most rely exclusively on knowledge provided by the developers themselves and have little ability to expand their knowledge based on experience. Although such systems ideally would be used by application specialists rather than database professionals, most of these systems expect the user to have some knowledge of database technology.