Abstract:
Can we use google-style keyword queries to search relational or XML databases (rather than using SQL/XQuery or using complicated query forms)? This simple shift in the search paradigm brings several immediate benefits. For one thing, it can relieve users from the steep learning curve of mastering a structured query language and understanding complex and possibly fast-evolving data schemas. For another, it eventually increases the database usability, and has the potential to identify novel information hidden in the database. In this series of lectures, we will present motivation and challenges of supporting this keyword-based search and exploration on databases. We will survey state-of-the-art approaches covering various topics including query result definition, ranking, query processing and optimisation, and result post-processing. Finally we identify challenges and opportunities for future research in this field.

Biography:
Dr. Wei Wang is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Australia. His current research interests include integration of database and information
retrieval technologies (DB+IR), data cleaning and integration, query processing and optimisation, and spatial databases. He has published over fifty research papers in these areas in major international journal (TODS, VLDB J, TKDE) and conferences (SIGMOD, VLDB, ICDE, WWW). More information can be found on his homepage: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~weiw