Querying Bi-level Information

In our research on superimposed information management, we have developed applications where information elements in the superimposed layer serve to annotate, comment, restructure, and combine selections from one or more existing documents in the base layer. Base documents tend to be unstructured or semi-structured (HTML pages, Excel spreadsheets, and so on) with marks delimiting selections. Selections in the base layer can be programmatically accessed via marks to retrieve content and context. The applications we have built to date allow creation of new marks and new superimposed elements (that use marks), but they have been browse-oriented and tend to expose the line between superimposed and base layers. Here, we present a new access capability, called bilevel queries, that allows an application or user to query over both layers as a whole. Bi-level queries provide an alternative style of data integration where only relevant portions of a base document are mediated (not the whole do...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: WEBDB
• Authors: Sudarshan Murthy, David Maier, Lois M. L. Delcambre
• Keywords: Base Layer, Information, Information Management, Internet Technology, WEBDB 2004