Multi-dimensional search for personal information management systems

With the explosion in the amount of semi-structured data users access and store in personal information management systems, there is a need for complex search tools to retrieve often very heterogeneous data in a simple and efficient way. Existing tools usually index text content, allowing for some IR-style ranking on the textual part of the query, but only consider structure (e.g., file directory) and metadata (e.g., date, file type) as filtering conditions. We propose a novel multi-dimensional approach to semi-structured data searches in personal information management systems by allowing users to provide fuzzy structure and metadata conditions in addition to keyword conditions. Our techniques provide a complex query interface that is more comprehensive than content-only searches as it considers three query dimensions (content, structure, metadata) in the search. We propose techniques to individually score each dimension, as well as a framework to integrate the three dimension scores...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: EDBT
• Authors: Amélie Marian, Christopher Peery, Thu D. Nguyen, Wei Wang 0014
• Keywords: Complex Query Interface, Database, EDBT 2008, Fuzzy Query Conditions, Query Dimensions