Database Keyword Search: A Perspective from Optimization

Optimization-related techniques are playing ever increasing role for Web intelligence. Yet optimization may mean different things to different people. In this paper, starting with a general discussion on the many facets of optimization in information technology (IT), we focus our examination on the recent development in database keyword search, from an optimization-oriented perspective. We first present a review and analysis on related literature, pointing out the need for incorporating contextual information in database keyword queries to achieve better performance. We then present our recently proposed approach, where keyword search is extended to simple English queries to better capture user intension. We conclude this paper by providing a discussion on the importance of database keyword search optimization for data mining and Web intelligence.