Conflicting viewpoint relational database querying: an argumentation approach

Within the framework of the European project EcoBioCap, we model a real world use case aiming at conceiving the next generation of food packagings. The objective is to select packaging materials according to possibly conflicting requirements expressed by the involved parties (food and packaging industries, health authorities, consumers, waste management authority, etc.). The requirements and user preferences are modeled by several ontological rules provided by the stakeholders expressing their viewpoints and expertise. Since several aspects need to be considered (CO2 and O2 permeance, interaction with the product, sanitary, cost, end of life, etc.) in order to select objects, an argumentation process can be used to express/reason about different aspects or criteria describing the packagings. We define then in this paper an argumentation approach which combines a description logic (DLR-Lite) within ASPIC framework for relational database querying. The argumentation step is finally used to express and/or enrich a bipolar query employed for packaging selection.