Inductive characterisation of database relations

The general claims of this paper are twofold: there are challenging problems for Machine Learning in the field of Databases, and the study of these problems leads to a deeper understanding of Machine Learning. To support the first claim, we consider the problem of characterising a database relation in terms of high-level properties, i.e. attribute dependencies. The problem is reformulated to reveal its inductive nature. To support the second claim, we show that the problems presented here do not fit well into the current framework for inductive learning, and we discuss the outline of a more general theory of inductive learning.