Data semantic conflicts: An approach based on the notion of 'information bearing capability'

A fundamental question for databases and information systems is how data represents (bears) information. It seems that little has been said in information system literature that what and how data bear information. We articulate this problem with the notion of Information Bearing Capability (IBC) of data schemata under the shed of an Information Source-Bearer- Receiver (SBR) framework. The focus of this paper is to explain the phenomenon of semantic conflicts that why information received by different users of a database may be different even though they look at the same piece of data. To this end, we exploit semantic theories of information to elucidate that real world is full of information, a database is a representation of part of the information in analogue form and how through the process of digitalization a specific piece of information is chosen, queried and reasoned about, which is the most relevant to the different database users