Computer Science

Database, Information And Knowledge Based Systems

Overview

The storage and retrieval of information is one of the central functions of computer systems. For several decades database systems have been evolving and becoming increasingly powerful and complex. The Database, Information and Knowledge Based Systems Group is a large research group, which has been actively engaged in research in a wide range of different aspects of advanced database, information and knowledge based systems since 1980 and has participated in a large number of national and international research projects.

On the database side, research has focused on three main aspects – extending the functionality of databases, improving database performance and linking to different information sources in response to a query.

Major topics of research include:

Rule-based databases, including deductive databases, deductive object-oriented databases and active databases
Parallel databases
Distributed heterogeneous databases
Spatial databases and Geographic Information Systems

The developments on the Internet are transforming the conventional approaches to information storage and retrieval and providing exciting prospects for the future. The ability to connect databases to the web and to combine this information with other multimedia data sources to create more powerful information systems has raised new problems in areas such as finding information from a collection of heterogeneous data sources.

Our research in this area includes:

Linking distributed information sources via the web (including biological and medical databases)
Personalised presentation of information
Access to information from mobile devices
Information search and resource discovery
Distributed interactive simulation
Healthcare information networks

Although traditional knowledge based systems have been an important part of our research, recent developments, such as developments on the Internet and political recognition of the 'Knowledge Society', have created new challenges. Some of our recent research includes: natural language processing, visualising resources in web caches in virtual environments and problems of knowledge management in distributed medical applications.

More details can be found at DIKBS.