Lecture

Interactive Query Formulation over Web Service-Accessed Sources

Speaker:	Michail Petropoulos Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York (SUNY).
Date:	Monday, 5 June 2006
Time:	10:00 - 12:00
Location:	"Mediteranean Studies" Seminar Room, FORTH. Heraklion, Crete
Host:	V. Christophides

Abstract:

Integration systems typically support only a restricted set of queries over the schema they export. The reason is that the participating information sources contribute limited content and limited access methods. In prior work, these limited access methods have often been specified using a set of parameterized views, with the understanding that the integration system accepts only queries which have an equivalent rewriting using the views. These queries are called feasible. Infeasible queries are rejected without an explanatory feedback. To help a developer, who is building an integration application, avoid a frustrating trial-and-error cycle, we introduce the CLIDE query formulation interface, which extends the QBE-like query builder of Microsoft's SQL Server with a coloring scheme that guides the user toward formulating feasible queries. We provide guarantees that the suggested query edit actions are complete (i.e. each feasible query can be built by following only suggestions), rapidly convergent (the suggestions are tuned to lead to the closest feasible completions of the query) and suitably summarized (at each interaction step, only a minimal number of actions needed to preserve completeness are suggested). We present the algorithms, implementation and performance evaluation showing that CLIDE is a viable on-line tool.

Bio:

Michalis Petropoulos is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York (SUNY). His primary research area is in the intersection of databases and web technologies. He is particularly interested in enabling publishing and integration scenarios through the use of user-oriented and agent-oriented web-based interfaces to databases. Such scenarios involve semistructured and XML data, mediation systems, web services, visual query interfaces, rewriting queries using limited interfaces algorithms and schema-level integration. He is also working on design methodologies for database-backed web applications and their connection with workflow specifications. For more information, please visit: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~mpetropo Michalis Petropoulos received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his Diploma in Electronic and Computer Engineering from the Technical University of Crete in Chania, Greece. He has worked at Enosys Software Inc., which developed a commercial XML-based data integration platform, and as an intern at IBM Almaden, Microsoft Research and Bell Labs.

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