Supporting ranking and clustering as generalized order-by and group-by

The Boolean semantics of SQL queries cannot adequately capture the "fuzzy" preferences and "soft" criteria required in non-traditional data retrieval applications. One way to solve this problem is to add a flavor of "information retrieval" into database queries by allowing fuzzy query conditions and flexibly supporting grouping and ranking of the query results within the DBMS engine. While ranking is already supported by all major commercial DBMSs natively, support of flexibly grouping is still very limited (i.e., group-by). In this paper, we propose to generalize group-by to enable flexible grouping (clustering specifically) of the query results. Different from clustering in data mining applications, our focus is on supporting efficient clustering of Boolean results generated at query time. Moreover, we propose to integrate ranking and clustering with Boolean conditions, forming a new type of ClusterRank query to allow structured data retrieval. Such an ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: SIGMOD
• Authors: Chengkai Li, Min Wang, Lipyeow Lim, Haixun Wang, Kevin Chen-Chuan Chang
• Keywords: Boolean Conditions, Database, Efficient Clustering, Fuzzy Query Conditions, SIGMOD 2007