Many more complex data do change significantly as new experiments are done and new materials or material systems come along constantly and so entirely new data flood the literature. Materials scientists, like chemists, physicists and engineers, need means of finding these.
The material process selection problem is a multi-attribute decision-making problem. This paper describes a prototype material process selection system that integrates a formal multi-attribute decision model with a relational database. The decision model enables the representation of the designer's preferences over the decision factors. The imprecise queries better model the qualitative requirements and designer preferences that occur in preliminary design. | 
