Transformation of TCP-Net Queries into Preference Database Queries

TCP-nets are a popular approach within the AI community for preference handling. Concurrently, within the database community lots of work has been done to integrate preference handling into database query languages like Preference SQL, building on a variety of preference constructors under a strict partial order semantics. Moreover, many sophisticated algebraic optimization techniques and preference query evaluation algorithms have been developed there. This paper attempts to build a bridge between these two disciplines. We show how to systematically transform TCPnet queries into database preference queries, introducing a special ceteris-paribus embedding preference constructor. Moreover, this transformation opens up options to enhance the expressiveness of TCP-nets. On the other hand, it forms a basis for future studies of advanced TCP-net optimization techniques that can benefit from known results for preference query optimization in database systems.