The Rough Set Database System: An Overview

The Rough Set Database System: An Overview Zbigniew Suraj1,2 and Piotr Grochowalski2 1

Chair of Computer Science Foundations University of Information Technology and Management, Rzeszow, Poland [email protected] 2 Institute of Mathematics, Rzeszow University, Poland [email protected]

Abstract. The paper describes the “Rough Sets Database System” (called in short the RSDS system) for the creation of bibliography on rough sets and their applications. This database is the most comprehensive online rough sets bibliography and accessible under the following web-site address: http://rsds.wsiz.rzeszow.pl The service has been developed in order to facilitate the creation of rough sets bibliography, for various types of publications. At the moment the bibliography contains over 1400 entries from more than 450 authors. It is possible to create the bibliography in HTML or BibTeX format. In order to broaden the service contents it is possible to append new data using specially dedicated form. After appending data online the database is updated automatically. If one prefers sending a data file to the database administrator, please be aware that the database is updated once a month. In the current version of the RSDS system, there is the possibility for appending to each publication an abstract and keywords. As a natural consequence of this improvement there exists a possibility for searching a publication by keywords. Keywords: rough sets, fuzzy systems, neural networks, evolutionary computing, data mining, knowledge discovery, pattern recognition, machine learning, database systems.

1

Introduction

Rough sets, introduced by Professor Zdzislaw Pawlak in 1981 [16], are a rapidly developing discipline of theoretical and applied computer science. It has become apparent during the last years that a bibliography on this subject is urgently needed as a tool for both the efficient research on, and the use of rough set theory. The aim of this paper is to present the RSDS system for the creation of bibliography on rough sets and their applications; papers on other topics have been included whenever rough sets play a decisive role for the presented matters, or in case outstanding applications of rough set theory are discussed. Compiling the bibliography for the database we faced the fact that many important ideas S. Tsumoto et al. (Eds.): RSCTC 2004, LNAI 3066, pp. 841–849, 2004. c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004


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and results are contained in reports, theses, memos, etc.; we have done our best to arrive at a good compromise between the completeness of the bibliography and the restriction to generally available publications. Another difficulty we hade to cope with was the sometimes extremely different alphabetizing of author’s names. The following served among others as the sources for the bibliography database: – The publications in the journal Fundamenta Informaticae and others. – Books on the rough set theory and applications as well as proceedings of the international conferences on rough sets mentioned in the references at the end of this article. – Other materials available at the of International Rough Set Society. – Queries for “rough sets” in the website of the databases. The service has been developed in order to facilitate the creation of rough sets bibliography, for various types of publications. At present it is possible to create the bibliography in HTML or BibTeX format. In order to broaden the service contents it is possible to append new data using specially dedicated form. After appending data online the database is updated automatically. If one prefers sending a data file to the database administrator, please be aware that the database is updated once a month. There are following types of publications available in the service: article, book, booklet, inbook, incollection, inproceedings, manual, mastersthesis, phdthesis, proceedings, techreport, unpublished. This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents an overview of information used to characterize the RSDS system. The future plans for the RSDS system are discussed in section 3. Conclusions are given in section 4.

2 2.1

Description of the RSDS System Home Page

Having the system activated on a display appears the English version home page. The service menu comprises several options allowing moving around the whole system. The menu includes the following: Home page, Login, Append, Search, Download, Send, Write to us, Statistics, Help. 2.2

Appending Data

In order to append a new data to the bibliographic database at first one shall go to the Append section. Before appending a new data, user must login in the system using a special form. That form includes the fields allowing to insert user id and user password. If a user inserts a wrong user id or password then a message describing the mistake displays on the screen. If user wants to login at first, then one must use the other special form, by clicking the First login

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button. That form includes the fields allowing to insert: user’s name and user’s surname, e–mail, user id and user’s password. Next, the entered data is verified in the database. If all data is correct, the account for the user is created at once, and then the user is logged into the system automatically with a new data number in the database. This information helps at the implementation of existing data changes. After login, the special form displays and it is then possible to type a new data (excluding data about authors; another form is dedicated to entering the authors data). After providing an information concerning the publication type, the form is updated with fields required for inputting specific data. The fields required for proceeding with data input are marked with the star character (*). The required fields described are by the BibTeX format specification. After entering the required data, it is possible to proceed to the next step - which is inputting authors or editors data. The authors data inputting form be reloaded until the last author data record is entered. A user decides when to stop entering the authors data by clicking the End button. For the entered data verification, all the data is displayed prior to sending to the database. After accepting, the data is sent. The list concerning publication types together with describing them fields follows. Publication

Description An article from a journal. article Fields required: author, title, journal, year. Optional fields: volume, number, pages, month, note. A book with the known, given publisher. book Fields required: author or editor, title, publisher, year. Optional fields: volume, series, address, edition, month, note. Printed and bound matter, whilst the publisher is unknown. booklet Fields required: title. Optional fields: author, address, month, year, note. A part of a book, could be chapter or given pages. inbook Fields required: author or editor, title, chapter or pages, publisher, year. Optional fields: volume, series, address, edition, month, note. A part of a book with its own title. incollection Fields required: author, title, book title, publisher, year. Optional fields: editor, chapter, pages, address, month, note. An article published in conference proceedings. inproceedings Fields required: author, title, book title, year. Optional fields: author, organization, publisher, address, month, note.

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Zbigniew Suraj and Piotr Grochowalski Manual or documentation. Fields required: title. Optional fields: author, organization, address, edition, month, year, note. M.Sc. thesis. mastersthesis Fields required: author, title, school, year. Optional fields: address, month, note. Ph.D. thesis. phdthesis Fields required: author, title, school, year. Optional fields: address, month, note. Proceedings. proceedings Fields required: title, year. Optional fields: editor, publisher, organization, address, month, note. Report, usually with a given number, being periodically issued. techreport Fields required: author, title, institution, year. Optional fields: number, address, month, note. A document with a given author and title data, unpublished. unpublished Fields required: author, title, note. Optional fields: month, year. manual

Explanation on existing fields. address author booktitle chapter edition editor

Publisher’s address. Forename and surname of an author (or authors). Title of a quoted in part book. The chapter number. Issue, edition. Forenames and surnames of editors. If there also exists the field “author”, the “editor” denotes the editor of a larger entity, of which the quoted work is a part. institution Institution publishing the printed matter. journal Journal’s name. month Month of issue or completion of the manuscript. Additional information useful to a reader. note number The journal or the report number. Usually journals are being identified by providing their year and a number within the year of issue. A report, in general, has only a number. organization Organization supporting a conference. pages One or more page numbers; for example 42-11, 7,41,73-97. publisher Publisher’s name. school University college, where the thesis be submitted.

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series

A name of book series. If one quotes a book from given series, then the “title” field denotes the title of a book whilst the “series” field should contain the entire series name. title The title of the work. volume The periodical’s or the book’s volume. year Year of issue. In case of unpublished work, the year of completing writing. Year only in number format e.g. 1984. URL The WWW Universal Resource Locator that points to the item being referenced. This often is used for technical reports to point to the ftp site where the postscript source of the report is located. ISBN The International Standard Book Number. ISSN The International Standard Serial Number. Used to identify a journal. abstract An abstract of a publication. keywords Key words attached to a publication. This can be used for searching a publication.

Note: All data must be appended in the Latin alphabet – without national marks. 2.3

Searching Data

For the database searching go to the Search section. An alphabetical searching and an advanced searching options are possible. The advanced searching allows for providing the title, the author and key words of a publication. The required data can be sent to a user in two formats: at first HTML format data is displayed and then after clicking the BibTeX link, the BibTeX format file is created. It is then possible to download the created file with the *.tex extension (with an entered file name). Two file downloading methods have been applied for user’s comfort: – Saving directly to a user’s local hard drive. – Sending the file as an e-mail attachment. Before editing existing data into the database, user must login in the system and then using the Search option display HTML format chosen data on the screen. After clicking the Edit button, the special form displays with existing data and it is then possible to edit this data. A user decides when to stop editing the data by clicking the Submit entry button. After that the data is sent to the database administrator. If user logins as administrator, then there exists possibility for deleting redundant data in the database.

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Downloading a File

Before saving data to the file, one must specify the operating system for which the file with the entered file name and the *.tex extension should be created. Two methods for downloading the file in the RSDS system have been implemented: – Save to user’s local hard drive. – Send as an e-mail attachment. 2.5

Sending a File

It is possible to submit a file with the bibliographic data to the database administrator, who has the software allowing for appending automatically a large data to the database. In order to do it one can use a special dedicated form. Submissions in the form of BibTeX files are preferred. Please note that submissions are not immediately available as the database is updated in batches once a month. 2.6

Write to Us

This section allows to write and send the comments on the service to us by using the special dedicated form. This form includes a field for comments and the Send button. Any comments about our service will be helpful and greatly appreciated. Please post them to the database administrator who permanently carries out work on improving the service and broadening of its possibilities. 2.7

Statistics

This section allows to display two type of statistics about the bibliographic data in the form of the dynamic graphs: – Amount and types of publications included in the database. – Distribution of publication dates. Moreover, this section provides information concerning: – How many times the service has been visited by the users. – The number of registered users. – The number of authors in the database.

3

Future Plans for the RSDS System

We plan to extend the RSDS system possibilities to the following, among others: – – – –

Implementation of new methods for searching data. Implementation of new visualization methods of data statistics. Adding the database FAQ. Updating of the bibliographic database.

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847

Conclusions

We have created the RSDS system by applying some of the basic possibilities of computer tools which are needed in the bibliography database systems. Those tools support a user in searching of rough sets publications as well as downloading files in a natural and very effective way. The main point of the RSDS system is its extensibility: it is easy to connect other methods and tools to the system. It seems that our system presented in the paper is a professional database system which offers a stable platform for extensions. Using the RSDS system is an opportunity for information exchange between scientists and practitioners who are interested in the foundations and applications of rough sets. The developers of the RSDS system hope that the increase in the dissemination of results, methods, theories and applications based on rough sets will stimulate further development of the foundations and methods for real-life applications in intelligent systems. For future updating of the bibliography we will appreciate receiving all forms of help and advice. In particular, we would like to become aware of relevant contributions which are not referred to in this bibliography database. All submitted material will also be included in the RSDS system. The RSDS system has been designed and implemented at Rzeszow University, and installed at University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow. The RSDS system runs on any computer with any operating system connected to the Internet. The service is based on the Internet Explorer 6.0, Opera 7.03 as well as Mozilla 1.3 (correct operation requires the web browser with the accepting cookie option enabled). Acknowledgments We are grateful to Professor Andrzej Skowron from Warsaw University (Poland) for stimulating discussions about this work and providing bibliographic data for the RSDS system. We wish to thank our colleagues from the Logic Group of Warsaw University for their help in searching data, especially Rafal Latkowski, Piotr Synak and Marcin Szczuka. Our deepest thanks go to the staff of the Chair of Computer Science Foundations of University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow as well as the staff of the Computer Science Department of Rzeszow University for their support and their infinite patience. We are all obliged to the Editors of this book for making the publication of this article possible.

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