Keyword Search over Relational Databases: A Metadata Approach

Summary: Metadata-based framework for keyword search in relational DBs without precomputed indices or full content access. The method casts keyword-to-SQL translation as a joint assignment problem solved by the Hungarian algorithm, capturing inter-dependencies among keyword mappings and yielding semantically faithful SQL queries, with thorough experiments. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 4413
Venue: SIGMOD
Year: 2011
Pagerank: 6.7824746e-05
Overall Rank: 3,758 | 73.86%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 10 of 10 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
1,168	SODA: Generating SQL for Business Users	2012	VLDB	0.00013541143
1,687	QUEST: A Keyword Search System for Relational Data based on Semantic and Machine Learning Techniques	2013	VLDB	0.00010916417
1,958	Exemplar Queries: Give me an Example of What You Need	2014	VLDB	9.9572632e-05
5,032	Actively Soliciting Feedback for Query Answers in Keyword Search-Based Data Integration	2013	VLDB	5.748807e-05
5,473	Facilitating SQL Query Composition and Analysis	2020	SIGMOD	5.4885366e-05
5,937	DataXFormer: Leveraging the Web for Semantic Transformations	2015	CIDR	5.2650964e-05
7,295	Searching with XQ: the eXemplar Query Search Engine	2014	SIGMOD	4.7728968e-05
11,892	Looking at Everything in Context	2015	CIDR	4.1945683e-05
11,922	Proactive Annotation Management in Relational Databases	2015	SIGMOD	4.1945683e-05
12,146	DrillBeyond: Enabling Business Analysts to Explore the Web of Open Data	2012	VLDB	4.1945683e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 14 of 14 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
48	Data Integration: A Theoretical Perspective	2002	PODS	0.00069720859
54	DISCOVER: Keyword Search in Relational Databases	2002	VLDB	0.00066047203
480	Translating Web Data	2002	VLDB	0.00022191997
548	Schema-Free XQuery	2004	VLDB	0.00020391259
877	Effective Keyword Search in Relational Databases	2006	SIGMOD	0.00015714014
994	Assisted Querying using Instant-Response Interfaces	2007	SIGMOD	0.00014755845
1,153	SQAK: Doing More with Keywords	2008	SIGMOD	0.00013642866
1,201	SPARK: Top-k Keyword Query in Relational Databases	2007	SIGMOD	0.0001334371
1,564	Keyword Search in Databases: The Power of RDBMS	2009	SIGMOD	0.00011350495
1,972	BANKS: Browsing and Keyword Searching in Relational Databases	2002	VLDB	9.8916725e-05
2,704	FleXPath: Flexible Structure and Full-Text Querying for XML	2004	SIGMOD	8.2720556e-05
2,784	Approximate XML Joins	2002	SIGMOD	8.128931e-05
8,632	Measuring the Structural Similarity of Semistructured Documents Using Entropy	2007	VLDB	4.4803734e-05
12,262	Keymantic: Semantic Keyword-based Searching in Data Integration Systems	2010	VLDB	4.1945683e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
9,589	A Graph Method for Keyword-based Selection of the top-K Databases	2008	SIGMOD	4.3209273e-05
3,450	Keyword Search on Structured and Semi-Structured Data	2009	SIGMOD	7.0824082e-05
12,262	Keymantic: Semantic Keyword-based Searching in Data Integration Systems	2010	VLDB	4.1945683e-05
9,069	Keyword Querying and Ranking in Databases	2009	VLDB	4.4032906e-05
8,766	Toward Scalable Keyword Search over Relational Data	2010	VLDB	4.456315e-05
5,672	Effective Keyword-based Selection of Relational Databases	2007	SIGMOD	5.3784128e-05
4,592	Keyword Search on Relational Data Streams	2007	SIGMOD	6.0613645e-05
276	Efficient IR-Style Keyword Search over Relational Databases	2003	VLDB	0.00029336949
1,564	Keyword Search in Databases: The Power of RDBMS	2009	SIGMOD	0.00011350495
877	Effective Keyword Search in Relational Databases	2006	SIGMOD	0.00015714014