CAREER: Querying Information Sources Across The Internet

这个研究项目的目标是帮助用户在互联网上找到他们需要的信息。遗憾的是，因特网信息源在信息类型和它们提供的访问接口方面差别很大。此外，可用资源的数量对用户来说是压倒性的。因此，有效地利用这些丰富的资源提出了具有挑战性的问题。为了解决这些问题，该项目的研究目标包括：（1）对HTML文档进行智能查询处理，利用查询日志、引文和用户反馈等信息为查询找到最有用的文档;（2）提取具有不同功能和接口的信息源的简洁摘要，以便用户查询的评估可以集中在最有用的信息源上;（3）集成来自多个异构信息源的查询结果，使得用户可以查询多个源并且仍然接收单个、一致的查询结果;（4）集成文本、关系和图像存储库，使得用户可以使用所有可用信息，而不管其格式如何。教育目标包括扩大哥伦比亚大学的数据库和信息系统课程。特别是，一个新的课程涵盖了数据库和信息系统的最新趋势。总而言之，本项目将开发工具，使用户能够无缝和透明地访问大量和各种因特网资源。实际上，用户将能够以简单的方式表达他们的信息需求，并接收相关数据，而无需进一步参与处理他们的查询。 http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~gravano

The goal of this research project is to help users find the information that they need over the Internet. Unfortunately, Internet information sources vary widely in the types of information and access interfaces they provide. Furthermore, the number of available sources is overwhelming to users. Therefore, using this wealth of resources effectively presents challenging problems. To address these problems, the research goals of the project include: (1) smart query processing over HTML documents, using information like query logs, citations, and user feedback to find the most useful documents for a query; (2) extraction of succinct summaries of information sources with varying capabilities and interfaces, so that the evaluation of user queries can focus on only the most useful information sources; (3) integration of query results from multiple heterogeneous information sources, so that users can query multiple sources and still receive a single, coherent query result; (4) integration of text, relational, and image repositories, so that users can use all available information regardless of its format. The educational objectives include the expansion of the curriculum in databases and information systems at Columbia University. In particular, a new course covers the latest trends in database and information systems. In summary, this project will develop the tools to provide users with seamless and transparent access to the large number and variety of Internet sources. In effect, users will be able to express their information need in simple ways, and receive the relevant data with no further involvement in the processing of their queries. http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~gravano