On answering why and why-not questions in databases

Abstract

There is a growing interest in allowing users to ask questions on received results in the hope of improving the usability of database systems. This research aims at answering the so called why and why-not questions on received results w.r.t. different query settings in databases. The main goals of this research are: (i) studying the problem of answering the why and the why-not questions in databases; (ii) finding efficient strategies for answering these questions in terms of different query settings and (iii) finally, developing a framework that can take advantage of the existing data indexing and query evaluation techniques available to answer such questions in databases. We believe that the research undertaken by us can contribute towards improving the usability of traditional database systems.