What is Multiqualification

The topic presented in this chapter refers to qualifying objects in some kinds of vague queries sent to relational databases. We want to compute a fulfillment degree in order to measure the quality of objects when we search them in databases. After a discussion on various kinds of object linguistic qualification, with different kinds of fuzzy conditions in a fuzzy query, a new particular situation is proposed to be included in this subject: the relative object qualification as a query selection criterion, that is, queries with two conditions in which the first one depends on the results of the second one. It is another way to express the user’s preferences in a flexible query. In connection with this, a new fuzzy aggregation operator, AMONG, is defined. We also propose an algorithm to evaluate this kind of queries and some definitions to make it applicable and efficient (dynamic modeling of the linguistic values and unified model of the context). We demonstrate these ideas with software already implemented in our lab.