ExpressQ: identifying keyword context and search target in relational keyword queries

Keyword search in relational databases has gained popularity due to its ease of use. However, the challenge to return query answers that satisfy users’ information need remains. Traditional keyword queries have limited expressive capability and are ambiguous. In this work, we extend keyword queries to enhance their expressive power and describe an semantic approach to process these queries. Our approach considers keywords that match meta-data such as the names of relations and attributes, and utilizes them to provide the context of subsequent keywords in the query. Based on the ORM schema graph which captures the semantics of objects and relationships in the database, we determine the objects and relationships referred to by the keywords in order to infer the search target of the query. Then, we construct a set of minimal connected graphs called query patterns, to represent user’s possible search intentions. Finally, we translate the top-k ranked query patterns into SQL statements in order to retrieve information that the user is interested in. We develop a system prototype called ExpressQ to process the extended keyword queries. Experimental results show that our system is able to generate SQL statements that retrieve user intended information effectively.