Estimating Answer Sizes for XML Queries

Abstract. Estimating the sizes of query results, and intermediate results, is crucial to many aspects of query processing. In particular, it is necessary for effective query optimization. Even at the user level, predictions of the total result size can be valuable in “next-step ” decisions, such as query refinement. This paper proposes a technique to obtain query result size estimates effectively in an XML database. Queries in XML frequently specify structural patterns, requiring specific relationships between selected elements. Whereas traditional techniques can estimate the number of nodes (XML elements) that will satisfy a node-specific predicate in the query pattern, such estimates cannot easily be combined to provide estimates for the entire query pattern, since element occurrences are expected to have high correlation. We propose a solution based on a novel histogram encoding of element occurrence position. With such position histograms, we are able to obtain estimates of sizes for complex pattern queries, as well as for simpler intermediate patterns that may be evaluated in alternative query plans, by means of a position histogram join (pH-join) algorithm that we introduce. We extend our technique to exploit schema information regarding allowable structure (the no-overlap property) through the use of a coverage histogram. We present an extensive experimental evaluation using several XML data sets, both real and synthetic, with a variety of queries. Our results demonstrate that accurate and robust estimates can be achieved, with limited space, and at a miniscule computational cost. These techniques have been implemented in the context of the TIMBER native XML database [22] at the University of Michigan.

Relational Approach to Logical Query Optimization of XPath

To be able to handle the ever growing volumes of XML documents, effective and efficient data management solutions are needed. Managing XML data in a relational DBMS has great potential. Recently, effective relational storage schemes and index structures have been proposed as well as special-purpose join operators to speed up querying of XML data using XPath/XQuery. In this paper, we address the topic of query plan construction and logical query optimization. The claim of this paper is that standard relational algebra extended with special-purpose join operators suffices for logical query optimization. We focus on the XPath accelerator storage scheme and associated staircase join operators, but the approach can be generalized easily

Finding Patterns in a Knowledge Base using Keywords to Compose Table Answers

We aim to provide table answers to keyword queries against knowledge bases. For queries referring to multiple entities, like "Washington cities population" and "Mel Gibson movies", it is better to represent each relevant answer as a table which aggregates a set of entities or entity-joins within the same table scheme or pattern. In this paper, we study how to find highly relevant patterns in a knowledge base for user-given keyword queries to compose table answers. A knowledge base can be modeled as a directed graph called knowledge graph, where nodes represent entities in the knowledge base and edges represent the relationships among them. Each node/edge is labeled with type and text. A pattern is an aggregation of subtrees which contain all keywords in the texts and have the same structure and types on node/edges. We propose efficient algorithms to find patterns that are relevant to the query for a class of scoring functions. We show the hardness of the problem in theory, and propose path-based indexes that are affordable in memory. Two query-processing algorithms are proposed: one is fast in practice for small queries (with small patterns as answers) by utilizing the indexes; and the other one is better in theory, with running time linear in the sizes of indexes and answers, which can handle large queries better. We also conduct extensive experimental study to compare our approaches with a naive adaption of known techniques.Comment: VLDB 201

gMark: Schema-Driven Generation of Graphs and Queries

Massive graph data sets are pervasive in contemporary application domains. Hence, graph database systems are becoming increasingly important. In the experimental study of these systems, it is vital that the research community has shared solutions for the generation of database instances and query workloads having predictable and controllable properties. In this paper, we present the design and engineering principles of gMark, a domain- and query language-independent graph instance and query workload generator. A core contribution of gMark is its ability to target and control the diversity of properties of both the generated instances and the generated workloads coupled to these instances. Further novelties include support for regular path queries, a fundamental graph query paradigm, and schema-driven selectivity estimation of queries, a key feature in controlling workload chokepoints. We illustrate the flexibility and practical usability of gMark by showcasing the framework's capabilities in generating high quality graphs and workloads, and its ability to encode user-defined schemas across a variety of application domains.Comment: Accepted in November 2016. URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7762945/. in IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 201

Materialized View Selection in XML Databases

Materialized views, a rdbms silver bullet, demonstrate its efficacy in many applications, especially as a data warehousing/decison support system tool. The pivot of playing materialized views efficiently is view selection. Though studied for over thirty years in rdbms, the selection is hard to make in the context of xml databases, where both the semi-structured data and the expressiveness of xml query languages add challenges to the view selection problem. We start our discussion on producing minimal xml views (in terms of size) as candidates for a given workload (a query set). To facilitate intuitionistic view selection, we present a view graph (called vcube) to structurally maintain all generated views. By basing our selection on vcube for materialization, we propose two view selection strategies, targeting at space-optimized and space-time tradeoff, respectively. We built our implementation on top of Berkeley DB XML, demonstrating that significant performance improvement could be obtained using our proposed approaches

Optimizing scoring functions and indexes for proximity search in type-annotated corpora

We introduce a new, powerful class of text proximity queries: find an instance of a given "answer type" (person, place, distance) near "selector" tokens matching given literals or satisfying given ground predicates. An example query is type=distance NEAR Hamburg Munich. Nearness is defined as a flexible, trainable parameterized aggregation function of the selectors, their frequency in the corpus, and their distance from the candidate answer. Such queries provide a key data reduction step for information extraction, data integration, question answering, and other text-processing applications. We describe the architecture of a next-generation information retrieval engine for such applications, and investigate two key technical problems faced in building it. First, we propose a new algorithm that estimates a scoring function from past logs of queries and answer spans. Plugging the scoring function into the query processor gives high accuracy: typically, an answer is found at rank 2-4. Second, we exploit the skew in the distribution over types seen in query logs to optimize the space required by the new index structures required by our system. Extensive performance studies with a 10GB, 2-million document TREC corpus and several hundred TREC queries show both the accuracy and the efficiency of our system. From an initial 4.3GB index using 18,000 types from WordNet, we can discard 88% of the space, while inflating query times by a factor of only 1.9. Our final index overhead is only 20% of the total index space needed