FCA File Formats

From fcastone

The aim of this section is to present and discuss commonly used file formats in FCA software. It may also serve as a platform to design new formats not yet implemented in any program.

Contents 1 Formal (Binary) Context Formats 1.1 Burmeister 1.1.1 Structure 1.1.2 Example 1.2 Colibri 1.2.1 Example 1.3 ConExp 1.3.1 Example 1.4 CSV 1.4.1 Example 1.5 FIMI 1.6 Galicia 1.7 Galicia2 1.7.1 Example 2 Anonymous Formal Context Formats 2.1 Anonymous Burmeister 2.1.1 Example 2.2 FCALGS 2.2.1 Example 3 Many Valued Context Formats 3.1 CSV 4 Lattice Formats 5 Layout Formats 6 Other Formats

Formal (Binary) Context Formats

How to store formal contexts.

Burmeister

This file format is the file format of Burmeisters ConImp, and is supported by a number of programs. It is easily recognizable, human readable and small.

Burmeister's format is supported by ConImp, ConExp, conexp-clj.

Structure

The file format is structured as follows:

• the first line consists of a single "B"
• the second line contains the name of the context (note that some programs ignore this)
• the third and fourth line consist of the object and attribute count, respectively
• the fifth line is usually empty, separating the header from the actual content
• after that, all objects and all attributes are listed, each on a separate line
• finally, the context is given as a combination of . and X, each row on a separate line.

There are no restrictions on the context.

Example

B
name
2
2

a
b
1
2
.X
XX

corresponds to the context

   | 1  2
---+------
 a | .  X 
 b | X  X

Colibri

Example

 a: 1
 b: 1,2

ConExp

Example

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <ConceptualSystem>
   <Version MajorNumber="1" MinorNumber="0"/>
   <Contexts>
     <Context Type="Binary" Identifier="0">
       <Attributes>
         <Attribute Identifier="1">
           <Name>2</Name>
         </Attribute>
         <Attribute Identifier="0">
           <Name>1</Name>
         </Attribute>
       </Attributes>
       <Objects>
         <Object>
           <Name>a</Name>
           <Intent>
             <HasAttribute AttributeIdentifier="1"/>
           </Intent>
         </Object>
         <Object>
           <Name>b</Name>
           <Intent>
             <HasAttribute AttributeIdentifier="0"/>
             <HasAttribute AttributeIdentifier="1"/>
           </Intent>
         </Object>
       </Objects>
     </Context>
   </Contexts>
 </ConceptualSystem>

corresponds to the context

   | 1 2 
---+-----
 a | . x
 b | x x

CSV

Example

a,2
b,1
b,2

FIMI

Galicia

Galicia2

Example

 <Galicia_Document>
   <BinaryContext numberObj="2" numberAtt="2">
     <Name>Context</Name>
     <Object>a</Object>
     <Object>b</Object>
     <Attribute>1</Attribute>
     <Attribute>2</Attribute>
     <BinRel idxO="0" idxA="1"></BinRel>
     <BinRel idxO="1" idxA="0"></BinRel>
     <BinRel idxO="1" idxA="1"></BinRel>
   </BinaryContext>
 </Galicia_Document>

Anonymous Formal Context Formats

There are a number of context formats which are not able to store the correct names of objects and attributes of a given context. They are normally used to do heavyweight computations, where the translation of the computed result to the actual result can be done afterwards.

Anonymous Burmeister

This file format does not really exist, it's only some idea to have an unrestricted anonymous format for formal contexts.

Example

 A
 .X
 XX

FCALGS

Example

 2
 1 2

Many Valued Context Formats

How to store many-valued contexts. Should we also discuss SQL (relational databases) here?

CSV

Lattice Formats

How to store lattice (are there a lot of programs around which can store concepts lattices separately?)

Layout Formats

How to store images of lattices. (I don't know whether this is appropriate to separate this from the lattice formats, in particular ConExp does not do this)

Other Formats

Everything else one could store/dump in/to file(s), as maybe implications/association-rules, ...