Automating Feature Extraction from Entity-Relation Models: Experimental Evaluation of Machine Learning Methods for Relational Learning

Abstract

With the exponential growth of data, extracting actionable insights becomes resource-intensive. In many organizations, normalized relational databases store a significant portion of this data, where tables are interconnected through some relations. This paper explores relational learning, which involves joining and merging database tables, often normalized in the third normal form. The subsequent processing includes extracting features and utilizing them in machine learning (ML) models. In this paper, we experiment with the propositionalization algorithm (i.e., Wordification) for feature engineering. Next, we compare the algorithms PropDRM and PropStar, which are designed explicitly for multi-relational data mining, to traditional machine learning algorithms. Based on the performed experiments, we concluded that Gradient Boost, compared to PropDRM, achieves similar performance (F1 score, accuracy, and AUC) on multiple datasets. PropStar consistently underperformed on some datasets while being comparable to the other algorithms on others. In summary, the propositionalization algorithm for feature extraction makes it feasible to apply traditional ML algorithms for relational learning directly. In contrast, approaches tailored specifically for relational learning still face challenges in scalability, interpretability, and efficiency. These findings have a practical impact that can help speed up the adoption of machine learning in business contexts where data is stored in relational format without requiring domain-specific feature extraction.