MALEX: a MAp-like exploration model on XML database

Keyword search on XML data has been a hot research issue recently. Towards the ultimate goal of retrieving results that match user's search intention, existing methods keep improving the matching semantics and result retrieval methods. A list of query results in the form of subtrees will be returned to the users. However, we find that the traditional way of returning a list of subtrees to the users is still not sufficient to meet users' information needs because: (1) search intention of a keyword query can be different with different users issuing it; (2) amongst the query results, they may have sibling and containment relationships, which could be important for digesting the query results and should be displayed to the users as well. To address the problem, we propose a new exploration model MALEX to work as a complementary component of the XML keyword search engine, in order to enhance users' search experience. It can even work independently as a new way to explore the XML database.