Separating the Cases from the Data: Towards
More Flexible Case-Based Reasoning

Mike Brown1, Ian Watson2 and Nick Filer1

1 Department of Computer Science, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
michaelb/nick@cs.man.ac.uk
2 Department of Surveying, University of Salford, Salford, UK
i.d.watson@surveying.salford.ac.uk


Abstract. The number of successful, small-scale and purpose-built applications 
of CBR is growing rapidly. However, CBR has so far not been
widely used as a methodology for reusing the large-scale data repositories 
typically maintained by a corporation. To facilitate this, cases must
no longer be considered as concretely represented at the data level, but
as virtual views of the underlying data. This paper argues that the basic
requirement to support virtual cases are mapping functions between different 
data representations. It is argued that the use of mapping functions
can increase flexibility in a number of ways. Multiple CBR applications
can exploit a single database. Similarly, a single case representation can
span multiple databases. Support for communication between different
CBR applications as well as the evolution of case representation within a
single application are also catered for by the same methodology. The paper 
provides reference to related work on database systems, with respect
to the issues of mapping function implementation and management.
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