Different approaches towards fuzzy database systems A Survey

Fuzzy data is a phenomenon often occurring in real life. There is the inherent vagueness of classification terms referring to a continuous scale, the uncertainty of linguistic terms such as "I almost agree" or the vagueness of terms and concepts due to the statistical variability in communication [20] and many more. Previously, such fuzzy data was approximated by non-fuzzy (crisp) data, which obviously did not lead to a correct and precise representation of the real world. Fuzzy set theory has been developed to represent and manipulate fuzzy data [18]. Explicitly managing the degree of fuzziness in databases allows the system to distinguish between what is known, what is not known and what is partially known. Systems in the literature whose specific objective is to handle imprecision in databases present various approaches. This paper is concerned with the different ways uncertainty and imprecision are handled in database design. It outlines the major areas of fuzzification in (relational) database systems.