Combining keyword search and forms for ad hoc querying of databases

ABSTRACT

A common criticism of database systems is that they are hard to query for users uncomfortable with a formal query language. To address this problem, form-based interfaces and keyword search have been proposed; while both have benefits, both also have limitations. In this paper, we investigate combining the two with the hopes of creating an approach that provides the best of both. Specifically, we propose to take as input a target database and then generate and index a set of query forms offline. At query time, a user with a question to be answered issues standard keyword search queries; but instead of returning tuples, the system returns forms relevant to the question. The user may then build a structured query with one of these forms and submit it back to the system for evaluation. In this paper, we address challenges that arise in form generation, keyword search over forms, and ranking and displaying these forms. We explore techniques to tackle these challenges, and present experimental results suggesting that the approach of combining keyword search and form-based interfaces is promising.

REFERENCES

• 1: ]]S. Agrawal, S. Chaudhuri, and G. Das. DBXplorer: A System for Keyword-Based Search over Relational Databases. ICDE, 2002.
• 2: ]]A. Bernstein and E. Kaufmann. Making the semantic web accessible to the casual user: Empirical evidence on the usefulness of semiformal query languages. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, under review.
• 3: Arvind Hulgeri , Charuta Nakhe, Keyword Searching and Browsing in Databases using BANKS, Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Data Engineering, p.431, February 26-March 01, 2002
• 4: Kaushik Chakrabarti , Surajit Chaudhuri , Seung-won Hwang, Automatic categorization of query results, Proceedings of the 2004 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, June 13-18, 2004, Paris, France [doi>10.1145/1007568.1007653]
• 5: ]]P. DeRose et al. DBLife: A Community Information Management Platform for the Database Research Community. CIDR 2007 Demo.
• 6: David W. Embley, NFQL: the natural forms query language, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.14 n.2, p.168-211, June 1989 [doi>10.1145/63500.64125]
• 7: ]]A. Halevy et al. Crossing the Structure Chasm. CIDR 2003.
• 8: Vagelis Hristidis , Luis Gravano , Yannis Papakonstantinou, Efficient IR-style keyword search over relational databases, Proceedings of the 29th international conference on Very large data bases, p.850-861, September 09-12, 2003, Berlin, Germany
• 9: Vagelis Hristidis , Yannis Papakonstantinou, Discover: keyword search in relational databases, Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Very Large Data Bases, p.670-681, August 20-23, 2002, Hong Kong, China
• 10: Magesh Jayapandian , H. V. Jagadish, Automated creation of a forms-based database query interface, Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment, v.1 n.1, August 2008 [doi>10.1145/1453856.1453932]
• 11: Magesh Jayapandian , H. V. Jagadish, Automating the Design and Construction of Query Forms, Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Data Engineering, p.125, April 03-07, 2006 [doi>10.1109/ICDE.2006.29]
• 12: Magesh Jayapandian , H. V. Jagadish, Expressive query specification through form customization, Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Extending database technology: Advances in database technology, March 25-29, 2008, Nantes, France [doi>10.1145/1353343.1353395]
• 13: ]]R. Krishnamurthy, S. Raghavan, S. Vaithyanathan, H. Zhu. Using Structured Queries for Keyword Information Retrieval. IBM Technical Report RJ 10413.
• 14: Fang Liu , Clement Yu , Weiyi Meng , Abdur Chowdhury, Effective keyword search in relational databases, Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, June 27-29, 2006, Chicago, IL, USA [doi>10.1145/1142473.1142536]
• 15: ]]Lucene. http://lucene.apache.org/
• 16: Gang Luo, Efficient detection of empty-result queries, Proceedings of the 32nd international conference on Very large data bases, September 12-15, 2006, Seoul, Korea
• 17: Moshé M. Zloof, Query-by-example: the invocation and definition of tables and forms, Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, September 22-24, 1975, Framingham, Massachusetts [doi>10.1145/1282480.1282482]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.8 Database applications

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation

Keywords:
keyword search, query forms, relational databases