LotusX: A Position-Aware XML Graphical Search System with Auto-Completion

Abstract

The existing query languages for XML (e.g., XQuery) require professional programming skills to be formulated, however, such complex query languages burden the query processing. In addition, when issuing an XML query, users are required to be familiar with the content (including the structural and textual information) of the hierarchical XML, which is diffcult for common users. The need for designing user friendly interfaces to reduce the burden of query formulation is fundamental to the spreading of XML community. We present a twig-based XML graphical search system, called LotusX, that provides a graphical interface to simplify the query processing without the need of learning query language and data schemas and the knowledge of the content of the XML document. The basic idea is that LotusX proposes "position-aware" and "auto-completion" features to help users to create tree-modeled queries (twig pattern) by providing the possible candidates on-the-fly. In addition, complex twig queries (including order sensitive queries) are supported in LotusX. Furthermore, a new ranking strategy and a query rewriting solution are implemented to rank and rewrite the query effectively. We provide an online demo for LotusX system: http://datasearch.ruc.edu.cn:8080/LotusX.