Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

Spring 5-31-2001

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Computing Sciences - (Ph.D.)

Department

Computer and Information Science

First Advisor

Jason T. L. Wang

Second Advisor

James A. McHugh

Third Advisor

Byoung-Kee Yi

Fourth Advisor

Michael Halper

Fifth Advisor

Qicheng Ma

Abstract

The Web is often viewed as a gigantic database holding vast stores of information and provides ubiquitous accessibility to end-users. Since its inception, the Internet has experienced explosive growth both in the number of users and the amount of content available on it. However, searching for information on the Web has become increasingly difficult. Although query languages have long been part of database management systems, the standard query language being the Structural Query Language is not suitable for the Web content retrieval.

In this dissertation, a new technique for document retrieval on the Web is presented. This technique is designed to allow a detailed retrieval and hence reduce the amount of matches returned by typical search engines. The main objective of this technique is to allow the query to be based on not just keywords but also the location of the keywords within the logical structure of a document. In addition, the technique also provides approximate search capabilities based on the notion of Distance and Variable Length Don't Cares. The proposed techniques have been implemented in a system, called Web-Based Approximate Query System, which contains an SQL-like query language called Web-Based Approximate Query Language.

Web-Based Approximate Query Language has also been integrated with EnviroDaemon, an environmental domain specific search engine. It provides EnviroDaemon with more detailed searching capabilities than just keyword-based search. Implementation details, technical results and future work are presented in this dissertation.

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