Collaborative Research: Achieving Information Integration of Web Databases Through the Construction of Metasearch Engines

这个合作研究项目（0414981，W. b孟，SUNY Binghamton和0414939，C. Yu， UIC）的目标是开发提供对Web数据库的集成访问的技术。该方法包括为以下任务开发高度自动化的解决方案：从Web上发现Web数据库，根据其应用程序域对其进行聚类，将同一域中Web数据库的搜索接口集成为集成搜索接口，将提交到集成接口的每个查询映射到其底层Web数据库，从本地Web数据库返回的结果页提取和注释搜索结果记录，并合并结果以形成集成响应以呈现给用户。将利用基于Web服务的Web数据库接口（如果可用）。所开发算法的评估是基于来自不同领域的真实Web数据库。这项研究预计将产生新的算法、有用的数据集、软件工具包和几个可操作的Web数据库元搜索引擎（包括罗马空军研究实验室的一些）。开发的技术可用于许多应用，包括比较购物和从深层网络收集数据。研究成果将被纳入pi教授的几门课程中，学生将被招募参与研究活动。研究成果将通过出版的论文和一本关于网络搜索技术的教科书来传播。该项目的网站（http://www.cs.binghamton.edu/~meng/DMSE.html）提供了对研究结果以及数据集和演示系统的访问。

The goal of this collaborative research project (0414981, W. Meng, SUNY Binghamton and 0414939, C. Yu, UIC) is to develop technologies for providing integrated access to Web databases. The approach consists of developing highly automated solutions to the following tasks: discovering Web databases from the Web, clustering them according to their application domains, integrating the search interfaces of the Web databases in the same domain into an integrated search interface, mapping each query submitted to an integrated interface to its underlying Web databases, extracting and annotating the search result records from the result pages returned from the local Web databases, and merging the results to form an integrated response for presentation to the user. Web services based interfaces of Web databases, if available, will be utilized. The evaluation of the developed algorithms is based on real Web databases from different domains. This research is expected to produce new algorithms, useful datasets, a software toolkit, and several operational Web database metasearch engines (including some for the Air Force Research Lab at Rome). The developed technology can be used in many applications including comparison shopping and collecting data from the deep Web. Research results will be incorporated into several courses the PIs teach and students will be recruited to participate in the research activities. Research results will be disseminated through published papers as well as a textbook on Web-based search technology. The project Web site (http://www.cs.binghamton.edu/~meng/DMSE.html) provides access to research results as well as datasets and demo systems.