Contracting preference relations for database applications

The binary relation framework has been shown to be applicable to many real-life preference handling scenarios. Here we study preference contraction: the problem of discarding selected preferences. We argue that the property of minimality and the preservation of strict partial orders are crucial for contractions. Contractions can be further constrained by specifying which preferences should be protected. We consider preference relations that are finite or finitely representable using preference formulas. We present algorithms for computing minimal and preference-protecting minimal contractions for finite as well as finitely representable preference relations. We study relationships between preference change in the binary relation framework and belief change in the belief revision theory. We evaluate the proposed algorithms experimentally and present the results.