Spanners: A Formal Framework for Information Extraction
Summary: Propose "spanners": functions mapping strings to span-relations, formalizing primitive representations (regex with capture variables and two automata models) and their algebraic closure. Prove one automaton equals regex captures, the other characterizes regular spanners; introduce core spanners with string-equality and show regular spanners closed under difference but core spanners are not. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)
Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time
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Authors
- 1. Ronald Fagin (IBM)
- 2. Benny Kimelfeld (IBM)
- 3. Frederick Reiss (IBM)
- 4. Stijn Vansummeren (Universit e9 Libre de Bruxelles)
BibTeX Citation
@inproceedings{fagin_pods13,
address = {New York, NY, USA},
series = {{PODS} '13},
title = {{Spanners: A Formal Framework for Information Extraction}},
url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2463664.2463665},
doi = {10.1145/2463664.2463665},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} Symposium on {Principles} of {Database} {Systems}},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
author = {Fagin, Ronald and Kimelfeld, Benny and Reiss, Frederick and Vansummeren, Stijn},
year = {2013}
}Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 5 of 5 citing papers.
| Rank | Citing Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,762 | Dichotomies in the Complexity of Preferred Repairs | 2015 | PODS | 8.0441688e-05 |
| 4,531 | Database Principles in Information Extraction | 2014 | PODS | 6.558436e-05 |
| 4,588 | Cleaning Inconsistencies in Information Extraction via Prioritized Repairs | 2014 | PODS | 6.5155201e-05 |
| 5,921 | A Relational Framework for Classifier Engineering | 2017 | PODS | 5.9470387e-05 |
| 12,551 | Next Generation Data Analytics at IBM Research | 2013 | VLDB | 4.9793485e-05 |
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 5 of 5 cited papers.
Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.
| Rank | Cited Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 33 | Consistent Query Answers in Inconsistent Databases | 1999 | PODS | 0.00049349003 |
| 297 | GraphLog: a Visual Formalism for Real Life Recursion | 1990 | PODS | 0.00021840374 |
| 305 | A Graphical Query Language Supporting Recursion | 1987 | SIGMOD | 0.0002159111 |
| 699 | Query Containment for Conjunctive Queries With Regular Expressions | 1998 | PODS | 0.00014686953 |
| 4,823 | Automatic Rule Refinement for Information Extraction | 2010 | VLDB | 6.3937168e-05 |
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