An efficient Web-based semantic SQL query generator

The Internet can provide transparent access to distributed databases via users' Web browsers. The client-server communication is accomplished using the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). However, the stateless architecture of the HTTP causes the client-server communication to be costly. Such communication requires a new database connection each time the user wishes to access the database. Applications typically access databases by submitting an SQL request to the server. Prior to submitting the actual query, the application typically submits a series of requests needed to help the user formulate the query. Reducing the amount of data between the clients and the server during query formulation enhances client response time and offloads SQL application server and database engine from frequent requests. We provide a model and an algorithm to efficiently retrieve database schema objects and offload the SQL application server by distributing the application processing between the client and the server. SQL queries may be constructed using a tree-like structure and are submitted to the SQL application server only when complete and validated syntactically as well as semantically. The model is unique in terms of simplicity and ease of SQL statement generation.