TITLE: Preference Query Languages

PRESENTER: Prof. Werner Kiessling, http://www.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/en/chairs/dbis/db/staff/kiessling/, kiessling@informatik.uni-augsburg.de

AFFILIATION:Institute of Computer Science, University of Augsburg, http://www.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/en/chairs/dbis/db/

DATE: Thursday 14th December 2006

TIME: 12:00:00

PLACE: CSE Seminar Room, Level 1, K17

ABSTRACT:

Current search engines can hardly cope adequately with fuzzy predicates
defined by complex preferences. The biggest problem of search engines
implemented with standard SQL is that SQL does not directly understand the
notion of preferences. Preference SQL extends SQL by a preference model
based on strict partial orders, where preference queries behave like soft
selection constraints. Several built-in base preference types and the
powerful Pareto operator, combined with the adherence to declarative SQL
programming style, guarantees great programming productivity. Skyline
queries as describes in the literature are subsumed by this functionality.
We describe also Preference XPath, which is the analogue for posing
preference queries in an XML environment. For rapid prototyping we show how
to loosely couple preference query evaluation with standard SQL database
systems. The Preference SQL optimizer can be implemented by re-writing
Preference SQL queries into standard SQL. This pre-processor approach
achieves a seamless application integration, making Preference SQL available
on all major SQL platforms. We report practical experiences ranging from
m-commerce and comparison e-shopping to a large-scale performance test for a
job e-portal.

Referemces:
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Werner Kiessling, Gerhard Köstler. Preference SQL - Design,
Implementation, Experiences. In Proceedings of the 28th International
Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB 2002), pp. 990-1001,
Hong Kong, China, Aug. 2002.

BIOGRAPHY OF SPEAKER:

Prof. Kiessling is the Head of Department of Databases and Information
Systems, Institute of Computer Science, University of Augsburg.
Prof. Kiessling's research interests include preference
based database systems and search engines, personalized information
systems, cooperative man-machine-interaction and agent systems,
preference mining, innovative database applications for
electronic/mobile commerce, libraries, efficient component based
middleware for multimedia internet services. Prof. Kiessling's research
profile also includes architecture, modelling and performance analysis
of database systems, knowledge based systems and expert systems.

Seminar information is also available at
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/db/ai/seminars/list/index.html

Host:

Toby Walsh

Seminar Convenor:

Van Hai Ho