Intelligent Fuzzy Type-Ahead Search in XML Data

In a traditional keyword-search system over XML data, a user composes a keyword query, submits it to the system, and retrieves relevant answers. In the case where the user has limited knowledge about the data, often the user feels “left in the dark” when issuing queries, and has to use a try-and-see approach for finding information. In this paper, we study fuzzy type-ahead search in XML data, a new information-access paradigm in which the system searches XML data on the fly as the user types in query keywords. It allows users to explore data as they type, even in the presence of minor errors of their keywords. Our proposed method has the following features: 1) Search as you type: It extends Auto complete by supporting queries with multiple keywords in XML data.2) Fuzzy: It can find high-quality answers that have keywords matching query keywords approximately. 3) Intelligent: Our effective index structures, searching algorithms and materialized views can achieve a very high interactive speed. Answering queries using materialized views has been well studied in the context of structured queries and has shown significant performance benefits.