If it has a syntax, it isn't user friendly

-- /usr/game/fortune

1. Project Overview

Keyword search is a dominant way of accessing information from unstructured data sources (such as the Web, emails, etc.). This project investigates technologies to enable free-form (google-style) keyword search on structured data sources (such as a relational database) and semi-structured data sources (such as an XML document repository).

There are many technical challenges to support this simple and intuitively plausible idea. For one thing, how to define the search results? On the Web, each result is just a page (or document). On (semi-)structured data sources, it is typically a collection of elements that are semantically meaningful and collectively relevant to the query.

As an example, we show the results of searching "tom cruise nicole kidman" on our system (SPARK) against the IMDB movie info database, and on other systems (Google and WolframAlpha).

SPARK

./spark.jpg

Google

./google1.jpg

Google

./google2.jpg

WolframAlpha

./wolframalpha.jpg

This research project is funded by ARC Discovery Project DP0881779.

2. People

Academic Staff:

PhD Student:

Undergraduate Student:

3. Publications

  1. Junfeng Zhou, Zhifeng Bao, Wei Wang, Tok Ling Wang, Ziyang Chen, Xudong Lin, Jingfeng Guo. Fast SLCA and ELCA Computation for XML Keyword Queries Based on Set Intersection. ICDE 2012.

  2. Yi Chen, Wei Wang, Ziyang Liu. Searching, Analyzing and Exploring Databases. DASFAA 2011.

  3. Yi Chen, Wei Wang, Ziyang Liu. Keyword-based Search and Exploration on Databases. ICDE 2011.

  4. Yifei Lu, Wei Wang, Jianxin Li, Chengfei Liu. XClean: Providing Valid Spelling Suggestions for XML Keyword Queries. ICDE 2011.

  5. Jianxin Li, Chengfei Liu, Rui Zhou, Wei Wang. Top-k Keyword Search over Probabilistic XML Data. ICDE 2011.

  6. Yi Luo, Wei Wang, Xuemin Lin, Xiaofang Zhou, Jianmin Wang, Keqiu Li. SPARK2: Top-k Keyword Query in Relational Databases. TKDE.

  7. Jianxin Li, Chengfei Liu, Rui Zhou, Wei Wang. Suggestion of Promising Result Types for XML Keyword Search. EDBT 2010.

  8. Yi Chen, Wei Wang, Ziyang Liu, Xuemin Lin. Keyword Search on Structured and Semi-structured Data. SIGMOD 2009 (tutorial).

  9. Yi Luo, Wei Wang, Xuemin Lin. SPARK: A Keyword Search Engine on Relational Databases. ICDE 2008. (demo)

  10. Yi Luo, Xuemin Lin, Wei Wang, Xiaofang Zhou. SPARK: Top-k Keyword Query in Relational Databases. SIGMOD 2007.

  11. Wei Wang. Keyword Search in Databases. Tutorial at APWeb 2006.

4. Online Demo

Please visit here.

5. Download

Please send an email to weiw AT cse.unsw.edu.au