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Speaker:        Michalis Petropoulos
                University of California, San Diego

Topic;          "Querying and Reporting Semistructured Data on the Web"

Date:           Monday, 18 March 2002

Time:           4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:          Lecture Theater F
                (Leung Yat Sing Lecture Theater, near lift nos. 25/26)
                HKUST

ABSTRACT:

Web-based query forms and reports are an important aspect of real-world
database systems. They allow millions of web users to selectively view the
information of underlying sources. A number of tools facilitate the
development of web-based query forms and reports that access relational
databases. However, these tools are tied to the relational model, which
limits the resulting user experience and impedes the developer in his
efforts to quickly and cleanly produce web-based query forms and reports.

I will present the QURSED system that enables the development of web-based
query forms and reports (QFRs) that query and report semistructured XML
data, i.e., data that are characterized by nesting, irregularities and
structural variance. The query aspects of a QFR are captured by its query
set specification, which formally encodes multiple parameterized, possibly
interdependent condition fragments and can describe large numbers of
queries. The run-time component of QURSED produces XQuery-compliant
queries by synthesizing fragments from the query set specification that
have been activated during the interaction of the end-user with the QFR.
The design-time component of QURSED, called QURSED Editor, semi-automates
the development of the query set specification and its association with
the visual components of the QFR and guides the development of meaningful
dependencies between condition fragments by translating the visual actions
into appropriate query set specifications. I will describe how QURSED
accommodates the intricacies that the semistructured nature of the
underlying database introduces and I will specifically focus on the formal
model of the query set specification, its generation via the QURSED
Editor, and its coupling with the visual aspects of the Web-based form and
report. I will also present part of my ongoing research that deals with
integration of information sources using web services. This work is based
on the query set specification formalism and aims to the integration of
web services exporting querying functionality by describing their semantic
connections and overlap.



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Biography:

Michalis Petropoulos received a Diploma in Electronic and Computer
Engineering from the Technical University of Crete in Chania, Greece, in
1998, and a M.Sc. in Computer Science from University of California, San
Diego, in 2000, where he is currently a Ph.D. student. His research
interests are in the field of web and databases and include mediator
systems, web services and visual query interfaces. Prior work includes
design of front-end generation tools, XML wrappers for relational
databases, news on demand systems and multimedia applications design and
development.

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