Optimizing SQL Queries over Text Databases

Text documents often embed data that is structured in nature, and we can expose this structured data using information extraction technology. By processing a text database with information extraction systems, we can materialize a variety of structured "relations," over which we can then issue regular SQL queries. A key challenge to process SQL queries in this text-based scenario is efficiency: information extraction is timeconsuming, so query processing strategies should minimize the number of documents that they process. Another key challenge is result quality: in the traditional relational world, all correct execution strategies for a SQL query produce the same (correct) result; in contrast, a SQL query execution over a text database might produce answers that are not fully accurate or complete, for a number of reasons. To address these challenges, we study a family of select-project-join SQL queries over text databases, and characterize query processing strategies on their...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ICDE
• Authors: Alpa Jain, AnHai Doan, Luis Gravano
• Keywords: Database, ICDE 2008, Query Processing Strategies, SQL Queries, SQL Query Execution