An application of case based reasoning to object oriented database retrieval

In the near future, a potentially huge number of telecommunication services will be available to the public. Information about these services will be stored by suppliers in large object oriented databases. Users will be able to locate services that suit their requirements by retrieving objects from these databases. However the user´s decision concerning the most appropriate service will not necessarily be simple: it will involve value judgements that seek to balance the desired service characteristics with other factors, such as availability, preferred supplier, and cost. One approach to this problem is to treat potential services as cases. This permits the application of CBR techniques, where the user´s service requirement acts as the match target. The author considers how ASCOT (a project in the CEC´s RACE) project followed this approach. Case based reasoning was an essential part of the ASCOT project. It increased the toolset´s potential usability by separating user´s requirements from the engineering requirements of the telecommunication service providers.