DigLib  Boolean Query Translation  Still under construction...

Boolean Query Translation is an ongoing project in the Stanford Digital Library Project. It deals with the problem of translating Boolean queries into different native languages supported by various search services to make distributed search possible and mask the users from the details of different query languages.

Until now, searching over heterogeneous information sources is difficult because of the non-uniform query languages. Our approach is to allow a user to compose Boolean queries in one rich front-end language. For each user query and target source, we transform the user query into a subsuming query that can be supported by the source but that may return extra documents. The results are then processed by a filter query to yield the correct final result.


Current Status

We have completed the theoretic work of the algorithms that generate minimal subsuming queries and optimal filters. We have implemented prototype versions of these algorithms and demonstrated them on heterogeneous Boolean systems including Stanford-Folio, Knight -Ridder's DIALOG, and DEC's AltaVista.

Currently, we have been focusing on the following aspects of the query translation problem:


Publications


Presentation

Comming soon ...


Chen-Chuan Kevin Chang

Hector Garcia-Molina

Andreas Paepcke


Stanford Univ.CS Dept.DB Groupkevin@db.stanford.edu

many, many

Last update: May 13, 1997

Chen-Chuan Kevin Chang
kevin@db.stanford.edu