Aliança: A proposal for a fuzzy database architecture incorporating XML

This paper presents a new fuzzy database architecture called Aliança. Fuzzy databases usually store information and its associated meta-information in order to add context to the whole range of different types that can be stored in these databases. However, the fuzzy database systems became very complex and difficult to maintain because fuzzy concepts are very difficult to represent using traditional database representation forms. Aliança, however, introduces a new way to represent this fuzzy meta-information base, which greatly simplifies data management tasks. The main advantages of these new representation are the easyness of understanding, implementation, use and support. This new meta-information base organizes information using the XML format, which adds the extra advantage of portability. FSQL assumes a conventional database and adds external tools to handle fuzzy data and is based on similarity relations and the theory of possibility introduced by Zadeh.