Introducing Relation Compactness for Generating a Flexible Size of Search Results in Fuzzy Queries

Generating relevant and manageable search results is of great interest in database queries and information retrieval nowadays. This paper proposes an approach to measuring relation compactness and to generating a compact set of query outcomes under a fuzzy relational data model. The approach has desirable properties that (1) the resultant compact set is unique and contains mutually distinct tuples at the specified degree, and (2) the resultant compact set is information-equivalent to the collection of original query outcomes. Moreover, it is deemed appealing that the approach provides a way to obtain query outcomes of different size in a flexible manner according to the specified degree of compactness or the preferred number of tuples by users. Keywords—Tuple closeness, Fuzzy databases and queries, Relation compactness, Information equivalence, Web search