Presented by the
TRDBMS Project
The
Centre for the
New Oxford English Dictionary and Text Research was
an active member of the Canadian Strategic Software Consortium
(CSSC),
formed in 1994 to conduct pre-competitive research into methods of
integrating text and relational data.
Fulcrum Technologies Inc.,
Systèmes Grafnetix Systems Inc.,
InContext Corporation,
Dataware Technologies Inc.,
Open Text Corporation,
Public Sector Systems Ltd., and
SoftQuad Inc.
were the other members of this consortium, which disbanded in 1997.
We assisted CSSC in designing extensions to the SQL Data Definition Language (DDL), Data Manipulation Language (DML) and Call Level Interface (CLI) which will allow structured text to be integrated into the relational model. We concurrently developed a prototype distributed federated database system which allows data accessed via the Oracle (Oracle) Relational Database System, the DB2 (IBM) Relational Database System, the SearchServer (Fulcrum) Text Engine, and the Pat (Open Text) Text Engine to be integrated.
The fundamental goal of our research was that it leads to the creation of good standards for managing and manipulating text. Such standards will encourage and facilitate cooperation between software, and thus indirectly between software vendors, developers, and integrators. Without such standards textual information will continue to be incorporated into existing database technology in an ad-hoc fashion, and global access to textual information will remain either an elusive goal, or one which can be realized only with such great difficulty that few are able to effectively capitalize upon it.
Research Interests
We remain interested in both representing and managing structured text within a relational environment, and in representing relational data as structured text.
Our research interests include but are not limited to:
- Management of structured text and grammars (including SGML and XML).
- Integration of text and relations (including full-text extensions to SQL).
- Federated database technology.
- Database optimisation.
- Update of text.
Publications
- G.E.Blake, M.P.Consens, P.Kilpeläinen, P.-A.Larson, T.Snider, and F.W.Tompa, `` Text / Relational Database Management Systems: Harmonizing SQL and SGML,'' Proc. Applications of Databases (ADB-94), Vadstena, June 21-23, 1994, 267-280.
- M.Consens and T.Milo, ``Optimizing Queries on Files,'' Proc. ACM SIGMOD, 1994, 301-312.
- G.E.Blake, M.P.Consens, I.J.Davis, P.Kilpeläinen, P.-A.Larson, E. Kuikka, T.Snider, and F.W.Tompa, ``Text / Relational Database Management Systems: Overview and Proposed SQL Extensions,'' Department of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Technical Report CS-95-25, June 1995, 28 pp.
- Kar Yan Ng, ``The Use of a Combined Text/Relational Database System to support Document Management,'' Department of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Technical Report CS-96-07, January 1996, 121 pp.
- I. Davis, ``Adding Structured Text to SQL/MM Part 2: Full Text,'' Department of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, SQL/MM Change Proposal LHR-24, CAC WG3 N334R2, February 12, 1996, 42 pp.
- L.J.Brown, M.P.Consens, I.J.Davis, C.R.Palmer, and F.W.Tompa, ``A Structured Text ADT for Object-Relational Databases,'' in ``Objects, Databases, and the WWW,'' a special issue of Theory and Practice of Object Systems, Vol. 4, No.4 (1998) 227-244.
- M.P.Consens and T.Milo, ``Algebras for Querying Text Regions: Expressive Power and Optimization,'' J. of Computer and System Sciences, Vol. 57 (1998) 272-288.