User's Guide to CANTOR: A Data Analysis System Based on the Relational DataModel. Version 1.2

摘要

The last decade's developments in the theory and technology of data basemanagement systems has led to new possibilities for the design of general-purpose software useful for the detection and analysis of unknown kinds of interaction between loosely related classes of data. The system described in the report was designed with the goal of being able to analyze in depth, large and complex data bases, without recourse to problem-specific programming in a general-purpose programming language. The algebra of relations, with elementary set algebra as a subset, provides a basis for a very high level user language which is both powerful and elegant. When designing SAL, the user language of the system, an effort was made to combine the conceptual elegance of the classical mathematical notation with the typographical restrictions of today's man-computer interfaces. In the language, data transformations can be expressed and stored as data extensions, or 'views', in the data base itself. The report is the user's guide for a data analysis system developed at the Swedish Defence Research Establishment. The new version 1.2 has been extended with several new facilities.