ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the inference problem and the desired features of an inference controller. We first discuss the inference problem, and then we discuss some key criteria for an inference controller. Next, we introduce various inference strategies followed by a list of security constraints, also known as security policies, that must be enforced by any inference controller in order to protect a provenance database. We then discuss our approach to handling the inference process. Finally, we give a historical perspective. The organization of this chapter is as follows. Section 4.2 describes the inference problem including a discussion of inference strategies. Our approach is discussed in Section 4.3. A historical perspective is given in Section 4.4. A note on the privacy problem and its relationship to the inference problem is discussed in Section 4.5. The chapter is concluded in Section 4.6. Figure 4.1 illustrates the concepts discussed in this chapter.
