Keyword Searching and Browsing in Databases using BANKS
From the post:
BANKS is a system that enables keyword based searches on a relational database. As a paper that was published 10 years ago in ICDE 2002, it has won the most influential paper award for past decade this year at ICDE. Hearty congrats to the team from IIT Bombay’s CSE department.
Abstract:
With the growth of the Web, there has been a rapid increase in the number of users who need to access online databases without having a detailed knowledge of the schema or of query languages; even relatively simple query languages designed for non-experts are too complicated for them. We describe BANKS, a system which enables keyword-based search on relational databases, together with data and schema browsing. BANKS enables users to extract information in a simple manner without any knowledge of the schema or any need for writing complex queries. A user can get information by typing a few keywords, following hyperlinks, and interacting with controls on the displayed results.
BANKS models tuples as nodes in a graph, connected by links induced by foreign key and other relationships. Answers to a query are modeled as rooted trees connecting tuples that match individual keywords in the query. Answers are ranked using a notion of proximity coupled with a notion of prestige of nodes based on inlinks, similar to techniques developed for Web search. We present an efficient heuristic algorithm for finding and ranking query results.
The paper: http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~sudarsha/Pubs-dir/BanksICDE2002.pdf.
It is a very interesting paper.
BTW, can someone point me to the ICDE proceedings where it was voted best paper of the decade? I am assuming that ICDE = International Conference on Data Engineering. I am sure I am just overlooking the award and would like to include a pointer to it in this post. Thanks!