Efficient interactive smart keyword search

Abstract

Traditional information systems usually return few answers if a user submits an incomplete query. Users often feel "left in the dark" when they have limited knowledge about the underlying data. They have to use a try-and-see approach to modify queries and find answers. In this paper we propose a novel approach to keyword search which can provide predicted keywords when a user submits a few characters of the underlying data in order. We study research challenges in this framework for large amounts of data. Since each keystroke of the user could invoke a query on the backend, we need efficient algorithms to process each query within milliseconds. We develop an incremental-search algorithm using previously computed and cached results in order to achieve an interactive speed. Some experiments have been conducted to prove the practicality of this new computing paradigm. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.