Modeling and management of fuzzy information in multimedia database applications

In this paper, we firstly present a conceptual data model for multimedia database applications based on ExIFO(2) model. The ExIFO(2) data model is chosen as the conceptual model since it handles complex objects along with their uncertain and imprecise properties. We enhanced this conceptual model in order to meet the multimedia data requirements. In addition to uncertain and imprecise information, we present a way of handling relationships among objects of multimedia database applications. Events that might be extracted from video or audio are also considered in this study. Secondly, the conceptual model is mapped to a logical model, which the fuzzy object-oriented data ( FOOD) model is chosen, for storing and manipulating the multimedia objects. This mapping is done in a way that it preserves most of the information represented at the conceptual level. Finally, in this study videos of football ( soccer) games is selected as the multimedia database application to show how we handle crisp and fuzzy querying and retrieval of fuzzy and crisp data from the database. A program has been developed to draw ExIFO(2) schemas and to map the schema to FOOD code automatically.