Redesigning The Structure and Access Paths of Databases for Effective and Efficient Query Processing

Many database users are not familiar with formal query languages, the concept of schema, or the exact content of their database. Thus, it is challenging for these users to formulate their information needs over semi-structured and structured databases. To address this problem, researchers have proposed usable query interfaces over which users can formulate their information needs without knowing about formal query languages, schema or the exact content of the database. Although the mentioned interfaces increase the usability of the databases, they inherently suffer from low search effectiveness. The recent growth in databases' content size and schema complexity only exacerbates this problem. In this work, we present theoretical and empirical results on the impact of database size and schema complexity on the effectiveness of the keyword query search. Based on these results, we propose a system that answers keyword queries more effectively. Furthermore, we in! troduce a novel data access approach to increase the efficiency of query processing in our system.

Major Advisor: Arash Termehchy
Committee: Alan Fern
Committee: Prasad Tadepalli
Committee: Liang Huang
GCR: Yelda Turkan