Children use popular web search tools, which are generally designed for adult users. Because children have different developmental needs than adults, these tools may not always adequately support their search for info...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781450366908
Children use popular web search tools, which are generally designed for adult users. Because children have different developmental needs than adults, these tools may not always adequately support their search for information. Moreover, even though search tools offer support to help in query formulation, these too are aimed at adults and may hinder children rather than help them. This calls for the examination of existing technologies in this area, to better understand what remains to be done when it comes to facilitating query-formulation tasks for young users. In this paper, we investigate interaction elements of query formulation including query suggestion algorithms for children. The primary goals of our research efforts are to: (i) examine existing plug-ins and interfaces that explicitly aid children's query formulation;(ii) investigate children's interactions with suggestions offered by a general-purpose query suggestion strategy vs. a counterpart designed with children in mind;and (iii) identify, via participatory design sessions, their preferences when it comes to tools / strategies that can help children find information and guide them through the query formulation process. Our analysis shows that existing tools do not meet children's needs and expectations;the outcomes of our work can guide researchers and developers as they implement query formulation strategies for children.
The U.S. Army, like many large organizations, relies upon heterogeneous and distributed information systems for managing massive quantities of data. Formulating queries within these systems has been difficult because ...
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The U.S. Army, like many large organizations, relies upon heterogeneous and distributed information systems for managing massive quantities of data. Formulating queries within these systems has been difficult because of the underlying structural complexity of the associated databases. Formulating queries across these systems has been impossible because of the additional lack of integration and interoperability. Building on work done by the Milton S. Eisenhower Research and Technology Development Center in artificial intelligence and database systems, the Applied Physics Laboratory is collaborating with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory to develop advanced capabilities to support automated query formulation, conceptual modeling, and systems integration. In addition, a framework based on intelligent agents and distributed objects has been developed that will facilitate the fusing of new and legacy systems, interoperability, and the creation of intelligent interfaces.
Visual graph interfaces improve the usability of graph databases by making it easier for users to formulate queries. Recently, a variety of interactive query formulation-based techniques (e.g., blending of visual quer...
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Visual graph interfaces improve the usability of graph databases by making it easier for users to formulate queries. Recently, a variety of interactive query formulation-based techniques (e.g., blending of visual query construction and processing, visual query suggestions) have been proposed to enhance query performance and usability. Comprehensive user studies are needed to exhaustively and systematically evaluate performance of the proposed techniques, but, unfortunately, user studies are expensive and time consuming. To reduce the cost and time needed, we present a novel synthetic visual subgraph query simulator called VISUAL. VISUAL realistically simulates subgraph query construction without requiring human users. It can automatically generate test subgraph queries having different user-specified characteristics by utilizing the underlying indexes and simulate their formulation based on different query formulation sequences. A key feature of this simulator is that it is built on top of an HCI-inspired, extensible quantitative model which enables us to model the visual query formulation process quantitatively. Our experimental study demonstrates the effectiveness of VISUAL in accurately simulating visual subgraph queries.
The ability to retrieve accurate information from relational databases requires proficiency in structured query language (SQL). In spite of its declarative nature, teaching and learning SQL for complex data-retrieval ...
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The ability to retrieve accurate information from relational databases requires proficiency in structured query language (SQL). In spite of its declarative nature, teaching and learning SQL for complex data-retrieval tasks remains a challenge. Cognitive load theory (CLT) explains the interactions between working and long-term memories in acquiring complex knowledge and skills. We used CLT to identify two instructional interventions expected to improve query writing performance under conditions of high and low query (code) complexity. First, we presented information requests in pseudo-SQL language rather than manager English to clarify the relevant elements in the data model. Second, we provided a query template as an intermediate problem-solving step prior to coding. We conducted an experiment with 63 student participants in a 2 x 2 x 2 repeated measures design in which the request language was either pseudo SQL or manager English, the task included a query template or did not, and the task had either low or high query (code) complexity. Results show that both request language and template usage significantly affected query writing performance but in different situations. Pseudo SQL requests had a significant positive impact on query accuracy with less complex queries but had no impact with more complex queries. On the other hand, using a query template prior to writing SQL code improved task performance with more complex queries but not with less complex queries. We discuss the implications of these findings for instructional design and future research.
The paper reports the development of Dipe-D, a knowledge-based procedure for the formulation of Boolean queries in information retrieval. Dipe-D creates a query in two steps: ( 1) the user's information need is de...
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The paper reports the development of Dipe-D, a knowledge-based procedure for the formulation of Boolean queries in information retrieval. Dipe-D creates a query in two steps: ( 1) the user's information need is developed interactively, while identifying the concepts of the information need, and subsequently ( 2) the collection of concepts identified is automatically transformed into a Boolean query. In the first step, the subject area - as represented in a knowledge base - is explored by the user. He does this by means of specifying the ( concepts that meet his) information need in an artificial language and looking through the solution as provided by the computer. The specification language allows one to specify concepts by their features, both in precise terms as well as vaguely. By repeating the process of specifying the information need and exploring the resulting concepts, the user may precisely single out the concepts that describe his information need. In the second step, the program provides the designations ( and variants) for the concepts identified, and connects them by appropriate operators. Dipe-D is meant to improve on existing procedures that identify the concepts less systematically, create a query manually, and then sometimes expand that query. Experiments are reported on each of the two steps;they indicate that the first step identifies only but not all the relevant concepts, and the second step performs ( at least) as good as human beings do.
Navigating through a hypermedia retrieval system bears the problem of selecting an item from a large number of options available to continue the trajectory. Ranking these options according to some criterion is a metho...
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Navigating through a hypermedia retrieval system bears the problem of selecting an item from a large number of options available to continue the trajectory. Ranking these options according to some criterion is a method to ease the task of navigation. A number of ranking strategies have already been proposed. This paper presents a formalization of the concept of ranking, and of the aforementioned strategies. Furthermore we propose two strategies allowing a personalized approach to ranking.
This work investigates the extent to which domain knowledge, expressed in a domain ontology, can assist end-users in formulating relational queries that can be executed over a complex relational database. In this rega...
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This work investigates the extent to which domain knowledge, expressed in a domain ontology, can assist end-users in formulating relational queries that can be executed over a complex relational database. In this regard, an ontology-driven query formulation architectural framework has been devised, namely OntoQF, that implements a two-phased approach - the pre-processing and translation phases. In the pre-processing phase, a new database-to-ontology transformation approach has been synthesised where domain ontology is populated and enriched with problem domain concepts and semantic relationships specified using OWL-DL. Once domain ontology has been formulated, end-users can write sophisticated ontology-based queries that are then translated, in the translation phase, into the corresponding relational query statements. In order to validate the correctness of translating single or multiple OWL-DL constructs into their corresponding relational ones, a set of test cases have been derived from the medical domain. Our results demonstrated that the OntoQF framework enriches domain ontology and its associated algorithms drive the process of relational query formulation without the need to both replicate transactional data into the associated domain ontology and have knowledge of the underlying database schema. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
The role of formulating a well-defined query in the retrieval of relevant search results is well-known to the users of an Information Retrieval (IR) system. Researchers have experimented with various approaches to for...
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The role of formulating a well-defined query in the retrieval of relevant search results is well-known to the users of an Information Retrieval (IR) system. Researchers have experimented with various approaches to formulating a search query, e.g., using topic fields in different combinations, reducing verbose queries, and query expansion to name a few. These approaches have been tested in various domain-specific IR applications. However, to the best of our knowledge, no survey or review article reviews the current state of query formulation in the domain of book search. This paper fills this gap in the literature by reviewing research publications on query formulation, published during 2007-2022. These publications have been selected through a rigorous search and selection strategy, where the findings have been summarized using a well-defined theoretical framework. It identifies the current trends and presents a cross-comparison for identifying the best-performing methods. The paper has implications for researchers working in IR in general and book search in specific.
We present a query formulation language (called MashQL) in order to easily query and fuse structured data on the web. The main novelty of MashQL is that it allows people with limited IT skills to explore and query one...
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We present a query formulation language (called MashQL) in order to easily query and fuse structured data on the web. The main novelty of MashQL is that it allows people with limited IT skills to explore and query one (or multiple) data sources without prior knowledge about the schema, structure, vocabulary, or any technical details of these sources. More importantly, to be robust and cover most cases in practice, we do not assume that a data source should have-an offline or inline-schema. This poses several language-design and performance complexities that we fundamentally tackle. To illustrate the query formulation power of MashQL, and without loss of generality, we chose the Data web scenario. We also chose querying RDF, as it is the most primitive data model;hence, MashQL can be similarly used for querying relational databases and XML. We present two implementations of MashQL, an online mashup editor, and a Firefox add on. The former illustrates how MashQL can be used to query and mash up the Data web as simple as filtering and piping web feeds;and the Firefox add on illustrates using the browser as a web composer rather than only a navigator. To end, we evaluate MashQL on querying two data sets, DBLP and DBPedia, and show that our indexing techniques allow instant user interaction.
With advances in digital imaging, the amount of digital images will increase tremendously. To locate relevant images in a large collection of images presents a challenging and genuine problem fur content-based retriev...
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With advances in digital imaging, the amount of digital images will increase tremendously. To locate relevant images in a large collection of images presents a challenging and genuine problem fur content-based retrieval research. This paper presents a novel framework called visual keywords for image indexation and query formulation. Visual keywords are flexible and intuitive visual prototypes specified perceptually from sample domain images. A visual content is described and indexed by flexible spatial aggregation of the soft presence of visual keywords. A new query method based on visual constraints is also proposed to allow direct and explicit. content specification. Last but nor least, we have developed a digital album prototype to demonstrate query and retrieval on both home photos and stuck photos based on visual keywords.
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