Matching Queries Research Articles

A Multi-faceted Approach for Searching Web Applications

Today the WWW contains not only a tremendous amount of information but also a variety of Web applications, such as online shopping. Searching for such applications can be difficult and time consuming because current keyword-based approaches do not always deliver results that match the user's intention. The key underlying problem is that keywords do not capture the semantics of the user's query and the functional capabilities of Web applications. This paper presents a multi-faceted approach for searching Web applications. In our approach, the search process is based on various facets, such as service functionality, item (product), result type, inputs/outputs, and the detailed information of items. It is based on matching queries and Web application profiles that are described in DAML-S. The matching process is augmented with the use of ontologies. The result of applying our approach to a set of Web applications resulted in a precision of 93% and a recall of 99%.

Main Memory Indexing: The Case for BD-Tree

We adapt and optimize the BD-tree for main memory data processing. We compare the memory-based BD-tree against the B/sup +/-tree and CSB/sup +/-tree. We present cost models for exact match query for these indexes, including L2 cache and translation lookahead buffer (TLB) miss model and execution time model. We also implemented these structures and conducted experimental study. Our analytical and experimental results show that a well-tuned BD-tree is superior in most cases.

Dictionary-Based Cross-Language Information Retrieval: Learning Experiences from CLEF 2000–2002

In this study the basic framework and performance analysis results are presented for the three year long development process of the dictionary-based UTACLIR system. The tests expand from bilingual CLIR for three language pairs Swedish, Finnish and German to English, to six language pairs, from English to French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Finnish, and from bilingual to multilingual. In addition, transitive translation tests are reported. The development process of the UTACLIR query translation system will be regarded from the point of view of a learning process. The contribution of the individual components, the effectiveness of compound handling, proper name matching and structuring of queries are analyzed. The results and the fault analysis have been valuable in the development process. Overall the results indicate that the process is robust and can be extended to other languages. The individual effects of the different components are in general positive. However, performance also depends on the topic set and the number of compounds and proper names in the topic, and to some extent on the source and target language. The dictionaries used affect the performance significantly.

Distributional Results for Costs of Partial Match Queries in Asymmetric K-Dimensional Tries

In this paper we study the costs CN of partial match retrievals in K-dimensional tries (K-d tries), constructed from N records. The probabilistic model that we assume is the asymmetric Bernoulli model: keys are sequences of independently and identically distributed random variables, which assume the values 0 and 1 with probability $p \neq \frac{1}{2}$ and 1-p, and are pairwise independent. We determine the extremal asymptotic orders that the sequence of expectations $(\mathbb{E}\,C_N)_{N \ge 0}$ may have for different fixed queries, as well as the narrow region that contains $(\mathbb{E}\,C_N)_{N \geq 0}$ for almost every query. Furthermore we show that $(\mathbb{E}\,C_N)_{N \geq 0}$ and $({\rm Var}\,C_N)_{N \ge 0}$ have the same asymptotics up to a logarithmic factor and, employing a central limit theorem for martingale difference arrays, we prove asymptotic normality of $\frac{C_N - \mathbb{E}\,C_N}{\sqrt{{\rm Var}\,C_N}}$. For random queries, assumed to be independent of the keys and having their specified components distributed according to the same Bernoulli model, no limiting distribution for CN exists, but we can prove asymptotic normality of $\ln C_N$, when appropriately normalized, and determine ${\rm Var}\,C_N$ up to a logarithmic factor, where now $(\mathbb{E}\,C_N)^2 = o({\rm Var}\,C_N)$.

Unitary operators on the document space

AbstractWhen people search for documents, they eventually want content, not words. Hence, search engines should relate documents more by their underlying concepts than by the words they contain. One promising technique to do so is Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). LSI dramatically reduces the dimension of the document space by mapping it into a space spanned by conceptual indices. Empirically, the number of concepts that can represent the documents are far fewer than the great variety of words in the textual representation. Although this almost obviates the problem of lexical matching, the mapping incurs a high computational cost compared to document parsing, indexing, query matching, and updating. This article accomplishes several things. First, it shows how the technique underlying LSI is just one example of a unitary operator, for which there are computationally more attractive alternatives. Second, it proposes the Haar transform as such an alternative, as it is memory efficient, and can be computed in linear to sublinear time. Third, it generalizes LSI by a multiresolution representation of the document space. The approach not only preserves the advantages of LSI at drastically reduced computational costs, it also opens a spectrum of possibilities for new research.

A case for associative peer to peer overlays

The success of a P2P file-sharing network highly depends on the scalability and versatility of its search mechanism. Two particularly desirable search features are scope (ability to find infrequent items) and support for partial-match queries (queries that contain typos or include a subset of keywords). While centralized-index architectures (such as Napster) can support both these features, existing decentralized architectures seem to support at most one: prevailing protocols (such as Gnutella and FastTrack) support partial-match queries, but since search is unrelated to the query, they have limited scope. Distributed Hash Tables (such as CAN and CHORD) constitute another class of P2P architectures promoted by the research community. DHTs couple index location with the item's hash value and are able to provide scope but can not effectively support partial-match queries; another hurdle in DHT deployment is their tight control the overlay structure and data placement which makes them more sensitive to failures.Associative overlays are a new class of decentralized P2P architectures. They are designed as a collection of unstructured P2P networks (based on popular architectures such as gnutella or FastTrack), and the design retains many of their appealing properties including support for partial match queries, and relative resilience to peer failures. Yet, the search process is orders of magnitude more effective in locating rare items. Our design exploits associations inherent in human selections to steer the search process to peers that are more likely to have an answer to the query.

Partial Match Queries in Random Quadtrees

We propose a simple direct approach for computing the expected cost of random partial match queries in random quadtrees. This approach gives not only an explicit expression for the leading constant in the asymptotic approximation of the expected cost but also more terms in the asymptotic expansion if desired.

NA-Trees: A Dynamic Index for Spatial Data *

In non-standard database applications, such as geographic information processing or CAD/CAM, methods of access are required that support efficient manipulation of multidimensional geometric objects on secondary storage. Spatial data consists of spatial objects made up of points, lines, regions, rectangles, surfaces, volumes, and even data of higher dimension. Being able to respond to spatial queries in a flexible manner places a premium on the appropriate representation of the spatial data. In order to be able to deal with proximity queries, an efficient spatial indexing strategy is needed. In this paper, we consider the problem of retrieving spatial data via exact match queries and range queries from a large, dynamic index, where an exact match query means finding the specific data object in a spatial database and a range query means reporting all data objects which are located in a specific range. By large, we mean that most of the index must be stored in secondary storage. By dynamic, we mean that insertions and deletions are intermixed with queries, so that the index cannot be built beforehand. A new data structure, a Nine-Areas tree (denoted NA-tree), is shown to be a solution to this problem. An NA-tree is designed for paged secondary storage to minimize the number of disk accesses during a tree search. From our simulation, we show that our NA-tree has a lower search cost (in terms of number of visited nodes) than the R-tree, R(superscript +)-tree, or R(superscript *)-tree.

Knowledge-Enhanced Latent Semantic Indexing

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is a popular information retrieval model for concept-based searching. As with many vector space IR models, LSI requires an existing term-document association structure such as a term-by-document matrix. The term-by-document matrix, constructed during document parsing, can only capture weighted vocabulary occurrence patterns in the documents. However, for many knowledge domains there are pre-existing semantic structures that could be used to organize and categorize information. The goals of this study are (i) to demonstrate how such semantic structures can be automatically incorporated into the LSI vector space model, and (ii) to measure the effect of these structures on query matching performance. The new approach, referred to as Knowledge-Enhanced LSI, is applied to documents in the OHSUMED medical abstracts collection using the semantic structures provided by the UMLS Semantic Network and MeSH. Results based on precision-recall data (11-point average precision values) indicate that a MeSH-enhanced search index is capable of delivering noticeable incremental performance gain (as much as 35%) over the original LSI for modest constraints on precision. This performance gain is achieved by replacing the original query with the MeSH heading extracted from the query text via regular expression matches.

Load balanced and optimal disk allocation strategy for partial match queries on multidimensional files

A multidimensional file is one whose data are characterized by several attributes, each specified in a given domain. A partial match query on a multidimensional file extracts all data whose attributes match the values of one or more attributes specified in the query. The disk allocation problem of a multidimensional file F on a database system with multiple disks accessible in parallel is the problem of distributing F among the disks such that the data qualifying for each partial match query are distributed as evenly as possible among the disks of the system. We propose an optimal solution to this problem for multidimensional files with pairwise prime domains based on a large and flexible class of maximum distance separable codes, namely, the redundant residue codes. We also introduce a new family of residue codes, called the redundant nonpairwise prime residue codes, to deal with files whose attribute domains are nonpairwise prime.

A knowledge directory for identifying experts and areas of expertise

Individuals in organizations often need to access knowledge that is outside their own area of expertise. Doing so requires “know-who” knowledge–knowledge of who knows what inside (or outside) the organization. This paper develops the concept of a knowledge directory, a database that can be searched via query. The knowledge directory returns a list of individuals rank ordered by the mutual affinity between their own areas of expertise and the content of the query. The technology behind the matching of person and query is centering resonance analysis, which develops a knowledge map, representing objects embedded in text as a network graph. We also present a way to analyze a collection of knowledge maps so that clusters of people who have similar expertise may be identified. We apply these techniques to a group of ten university faculty from the areas of industrial engineering, operations management, and supply chain management. Experiments attempting to match queries to specific faculty members are presented and discussed, and clustering techniques are used to show how the faculty aggregate into cliques of similar content and methodological expertise. Extensions of the method are discussed.

Probabilistic models of information retrieval based on measuring the divergence from randomness

We introduce and create a framework for deriving probabilistic models of Information Retrieval. The models are nonparametric models of IR obtained in the language model approach. We derive term-weighting models by measuring the divergence of the actual term distribution from that obtained under a random process. Among the random processes we study the binomial distribution and Bose--Einstein statistics. We define two types of term frequency normalization for tuning term weights in the document--query matching process. The first normalization assumes that documents have the same length and measures the information gain with the observed term once it has been accepted as a good descriptor of the observed document. The second normalization is related to the document length and to other statistics. These two normalization methods are applied to the basic models in succession to obtain weighting formulae. Results show that our framework produces different nonparametric models forming baseline alternatives to the standard tf-idf model.

A stochastic programming approach for range query retrieval problems

One of the important issues in range query (RQ) retrieval problems is to determine the key's resolution for multi-attribute records. Conventional models need to be improved because of their potential degeneracy, less-than-desired computability and possible inconsistency with the partial match query (PMQ) models. This paper presents a new RQ model to overcome these drawbacks and introduces a new methodology, stochastic programming (SP), to conduct the optimization process. The model is established by using a monotone-increasing function to characterize range sizes. Three SP approaches - the wait-and-see (WS), here-and-now (HN) and scenario tracking (ST) methods - are integrated into this RQ model. Analytical expressions of the optimal solution are derived. It seems that HN has advantage over WS because the latter usually involves complicated multiple summations or integrals. For the ST method, a nonlinear programming software package is designed. Results of numerical experiments are presented that optimized a 10-dimensional RQ model and tracked both middle-size [100] and large-size (1,000) scenarios.

Fine-granularity signature caching in object database systems

In this paper, we present the SigCache approach. In contrast to traditional signature files where signatures are stored in separate files, signatures are in our approach stored together with their objects. In addition, the most frequently accessed signatures are stored in a main memory signature cache (SigCache). When using the signatures stored in the SigCache as a filter during perfect match queries, the number of objects that actually have to be retrieved during perfect match queries can be reduced. The increase in update cost is insignificant, because the signatures are much smaller than the objects.

Advanced internet search tips; useful utilities and attractive add-ins

In the previous installment of this column, the basics of Internet searching were explored. The coverage included comments related to Common Browser packages and simple methods of conducting a search through initial steps in establishing and setting search criteria. The characteristics and usefulness of Web-located search portals, such as search engines, search directories, metasearchers, specialty search engines, and expert or topic-specific sites were also covered. The user was reminded that each search site is optimized for the retrieval of information based on the preferences of the site’s creator. Generally, this is a helpful concept until the user’s needs and concepts of relevancy of search hits differ from that ordered by the individual sites. In addition to this potential to retrieve less than a perfect match for each particular query, the time of the user must be invested to allow transfer of data from the Internet site to a protected site on the user’s computer that will allow the downloaded information to be examined for potentially harmful or malicious content, such as computer viruses, before the material is opened. Switching between different search sites can also consume valuable time. A final problem to the casual user of various search sites is the abundance of the information retrieved. This can make the processing and sifting of data into a form that is both manageable and useful to the end user a daunting task. Powertools are available to allow the casual user to go beyond the limitations of simple search engines. Enter the search utility programs, which are programs specifically designed to provide in addition to basic search capabilities, the ability to automate the onerous tasks of organizing the information found on the Internet, saving search results to specific custom folders, sorting references or entries, fixing broken links, or even changing the format of collected information into a form that may be manipulated or converted into other projects. Four robust and readily available search utilities are Copernic 2000 version 4.5, Atomica, Flyswat, and WebWasher. Copernic 2000 version 4.5 is available as a free download at http:// www.copernic.com/products/free/. It will allow the user to simultaneously connect to multiple search sites of the user’s choice and combine the output into 1 resultant query. The query interface is simple and allows the user to use plain text questions and search for phrases, all, or selected words. It has an extensive set of tools that rank sort and order results by relevancy, remove duplicate hits, and allow indexing of results by keywords The search reports may be exported in various file types, including HTML, Text, XML, Comma Separated, or dBASE formats. The results obtained may be saved to user-defined folders, the results e-mailed, and broken links validated and eliminated. Higher rated versions are available for a fee, which allow the user to work with greater numbers of specialized and general search engines and have more robust filtering and editing tools. Atomica (previously know as GuruNet) is also available as a free download at http://www.atomica.com/. The strength of this utility is its ability to find references, definitions, and Internet links to any word displayed on the screen of your computer. It works with browser packages, word processors, as well as e-mail packages. After you locate a word of interest, hold the Alt key and click on that word in your application. A compact window will display related links as well as other information pertinent to the item. For example, selecting a city name will return encyclopedia entries, dictionary definitions, and traffic and weather information. Flyswat is another free product that is available at http:// www.flyswat.com/. Similar to Atomica, it will provide the ability to search on specific words within an application or document. As an example, if you click on an area code, the program tells you the code’s location and gives you access to maps and directions; words and names bring up encyclopedia entries and definitions. The user should be wary of hidden dangers within the free price. Similar to the annoying buzz of the insect a flyswatter was designed to eliminate, Flyswat was designed to annoy users by eliminating a portion of their privacy. The use of Flyswat automatically sends a copy of each and every webpage viewed back to the Flyswat company server. Webwasher is an interesting utility available as a free download at http://www.webwasher.com/ to educational and university users. The strength of this utility rests in its ability to literally wash away most annoying banner advertisements as well as cookies. As advertisements are usually not displayed, your browsing sessions proceed more quickly. Its use requires the use of a proxy server, but the setup is quick and easy to set up. Add-Ins are available for use with most word processors to assist the scientific writer. The most popular of these products

Limit laws for partial match queries in quadtrees

It is proved that in an idealized uniform probabilistic model the cost of a partial match query in a multidimensional quadtree after normalization converges in distribution. The limiting distribution is given as a fixed point of a random affine operator. Also a first-order asymptotic expansion for the variance of the cost is derived and results on exponential moments are given. The analysis is based on the contraction method.

Gray code clustering of wireless data for partial match queries

This work was supported by grant No.1999-1-303-007-3 from the Interdisciplinary Research Program of the KOSEF

Querying multi-dimensional data indexed using the Hilbert space-filling curve

Mapping to one-dimensional values and then using a one-dimensional indexing method has been proposed as a way of indexing multi-dimensional data. Most previous related work uses the Z-Order Curve but more recently the Hilbert Curve has been considered since it has superior clustering properties. Any approach, however, can only be of practical value if there are effective methods for executing range and partial match queries. This paper describes such a method for the Hilbert Curve.

Partial match queries in relaxed multidimensional search trees

Partial match queries arise frequently in the context of large databases, where each record contains a distinct multidimensional key, that is, the key of each record is aK-tuple of values. The components of a key are called thecoordinates orattributes of the key. In a partial match query we specify the value ofs attributes, 0

A multichannel storage arrangement scheme of pictorial databases for concurrent spatial match retrieval

When touching the applications related to pictorial databases, then the first problem that should be faced is the large amount of pictorial data (pictures) to be retrieved. Therefore, in this paper, a multichannel storage arrangement scheme is proposed to allocate the pictures into a multichannel storage system such that the average response time for all possible conjunctions of simple spatial match queries is minimized.