DBScholar

Back to papers

A Query Language and Optimization Techniques for Unstructured Data

Summary: UnQL: a query language for rooted, edge-labeled graphs modeling unstructured data; relational data are representable as fixed-depth trees. Supports arbitrarily deep data and cycles beyond path expressions; efficient evaluation uses vertical optimization with relational-style optimizers on the horizontal dimension. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID
2972
Venue
SIGMOD
Year
1996
Pagerank
0.00030950263
Overall Rank
124 | 99.16%
DOI
10.1145/233269.233368

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{buneman_sigmod96,
        title = {{A Query Language and Optimization Techniques for Unstructured Data}},
        author = {Buneman, Peter and Davidson, Susan and Hillebrand, Gerd and Suciu, Dan},
        series = {{SIGMOD} '96},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} International Conference on Management of Data},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        doi = {10.1145/233269.233368},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/233269.233368},
        year = {1996}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 49 of 49 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
22 Data Integration: A Theoretical Perspective 2002 PODS 0.00056204792
48 DataGuides: Enabling Query Formulation and Optimization in Semistructured Databases 1997 VLDB 0.00044033592
137 Relational Databases for Querying XML Documents: Limitations and Opportunities 1999 VLDB 0.00029877792
236 Efficient Filtering of XML Documents for Selective Dissemination of Information 2000 VLDB 0.00023721569
318 Storing Semistructured Data with STORED 1999 SIGMOD 0.00021380325
348 Regular Path Queries with Constraints 1997 PODS 0.00020518814
430 A Fast Index for Semistructured Data 2001 VLDB 0.00018600166
454 Using Schema Matching to Simplify Heterogeneous Data Translation 1998 VLDB 0.00018133578
470 Query Optimization for XML 1999 VLDB 0.00017965707
645 Your Mediators Need Data Conversion! 1998 SIGMOD 0.00015338713
686 Query Containment for Conjunctive Queries With Regular Expressions 1998 PODS 0.00014948634
897 APEX: An Adaptive Path Index for XML Data 2002 SIGMOD 0.00013339862
1,233 Semistructured Data 1997 PODS 0.00011562468
1,253 Extracting Schema from Semistructured Data 1998 SIGMOD 0.00011475793
1,290 DTD Inference for Views of XML Data 2000 PODS 0.00011312135
1,302 Catching the Boat with Strudel: Experiences with a Web-Site Management System 1998 SIGMOD 0.00011238375
1,371 DTL’s DataSpot: Database Exploration Using Plain Language 1998 VLDB 0.00010995344
1,777 Deciding Containment for Queries with Complex Objects (Extended Abstract) 1997 PODS 9.7849758e-05
1,869 Formal Models of Web Queries 1997 PODS 9.5891634e-05
2,066 Rewriting of Regular Expressions and Regular Path Queries 1999 PODS 9.2348082e-05
2,114 Query Rewriting for Semistructured Data 1999 SIGMOD 9.1481121e-05
2,118 Query Decomposition and View Maintenance for Query Languages for Unstructured Data 1996 VLDB 9.1419103e-05
2,201 Querying Network Directories 1999 SIGMOD 8.9653966e-05
2,261 Type Inference for Queries on Semistructured Data (Extended Abstract) 1999 PODS 8.846133e-05
2,708 Cut and Paste 1997 PODS 8.2272626e-05
2,727 To Weave the Web 1997 VLDB 8.200085e-05
3,129 Structure and Value Synopses for XML Data Graphs 2002 VLDB 7.7256156e-05
3,308 Path Constraints on Semistructured and Structured Data 1998 PODS 7.5381026e-05
3,452 The Complexity of Evaluating Path Expressions in SPARQL 2012 PODS 7.4007472e-05
3,649 Query Planning for Evaluating SPARQL Property Paths 2016 SIGMOD 7.2251335e-05
3,711 The Expressivity of XPath with Transitive Closure* 2006 PODS 7.1778094e-05
3,734 STRUDEL: A Web-site Management System 1997 SIGMOD 7.1649073e-05
4,178 A Web Odyssey: from Codd to XML 2001 PODS 6.849218e-05
4,445 View-Based Query Containment 2003 PODS 6.699172e-05
4,495 Queries with Incomplete Answers over Semistructured Data 1999 PODS 6.6623097e-05
4,822 Colorful XML: One Hierarchy Isn't Enough 2004 SIGMOD 6.4919484e-05
4,972 On the Optimization of Recursive Relational Queries: Application to Graph Queries 2020 SIGMOD 6.4193234e-05
6,185 Containment of Nested XML Queries 2004 VLDB 5.9488248e-05
6,278 Constraint Satisfaction and Database Theory: a Tutorial 2000 PODS 5.9287393e-05
6,369 Capturing and Querying Multiple Aspects of Semistructured Data 1999 VLDB 5.8974169e-05
6,747 Query Processing under GLAV Mappings for Relational and Graph Databases 2013 VLDB 5.784841e-05
6,869 Views in a Large Scale XML Repository 2001 VLDB 5.7500027e-05
7,435 Computational Aspects of Resilient Data Extraction from Semistructured Sources 2000 PODS 5.6193788e-05
7,881 On Views and XML 1999 PODS 5.5242839e-05
9,878 Type inference in the polymorphic relational algebra 1999 PODS 5.2041072e-05
12,165 Does Query Evaluation Tractability Help Query Containment? 2014 PODS 5.093636e-05
12,856 Querying Websites Using Compact Skeletons 2001 PODS 5.093636e-05
12,898 Using LDAP Directory Caches 1999 PODS 5.093636e-05
12,931 DTL's DataSpot: Database Exploration as Easy as Browsing the Web... 1998 SIGMOD 5.093636e-05
Previous Page 1 / 1 Next

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 4 of 4 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank Cited Paper Year Venue Pagerank
300 GraphLog: a Visual Formalism for Real Life Recursion 1990 PODS 0.00022046803
403 Querying Object-Oriented Databases 1992 SIGMOD 0.0001907249
877 F-Logic: A Higher-Order Language for Reasoning about Objects, Inheritance, and Scheme 1989 SIGMOD 0.00013464822
3,915 A Data Transformation System for Biological Data Sources 1995 VLDB 7.0193727e-05
Previous Page 1 / 1 Next

Semantically Similar Papers

# Overall Rank Paper Year Venue
1 4,107 Processing Queries on Tree-Structured Data Efficiently 2006 PODS
2 3,067 Evaluating Queries with Generalized Path Expressions 1996 SIGMOD
3 1,434 A Query Language for Multidimensional Arrays: Design, Implementation, and Optimization Techniques 1996 SIGMOD
4 9,682 Graph Data Models, Query Languages and Programming Paradigms 2018 VLDB
5 294 Graphs-at-a-time: Query Language and Access Methods for Graph Databases 2008 SIGMOD
6 13,040 Investigation of Algebraic Query Optimisation for Database Programming Languages 1994 VLDB
7 143 Optimization of Nonrecursive Queries 1986 VLDB
8 95 Of Nests and Trees: A Unified Approach to Processing Queries That Contain Nested Subqueries, Aggregates, and Quantifiers 1987 VLDB
9 2,198 A Recursive Algebra and Query Optimization for Nested Relations 1989 SIGMOD
10 2,118 Query Decomposition and View Maintenance for Query Languages for Unstructured Data 1996 VLDB