Extracting Formal Concepts out of Relational Data

Relational datasets, i.e., datasets in which individuals are described both by their own features and by their relations to other individuals, arise from various sources such as databases, both relational and object-oriented, or software models, e.g., UML class diagrams. When processing such complex datasets, it is of prime importance for an analysis tool to hold as much as possible to the initial format so that the semantics is preserved and the interpretation of the final results eased. There have been several attempts to introduce relations into the Galois lattice and formal concept analysis fields. We propose a novel approach to this problem which relies on an enhanced version of the classical binary data descriptions based on the distinction of several mutually related formal contexts. Key Words: Galois lattices, conceptual scaling, lattice constructing algorithms, relational information.