INFSCI 3967 - Doctoral Seminar

Syllabus

Course Description:

Doctoral students are required to take a minimum of 18 credits of doctoral seminars. Seminars prepare students for the comprehensive examination and for doctoral research. (Prerequisites: satisfactory completion of the preliminary examination and admission to doctoral study in the department.)

Topic:

The Web and Databases (especially Deductive Databases).
Or: Using Deductive Database Technology for Web Applications.

Class:

Mondays, 12:00 PM - 2:50 PM, Information Science Building, IS 501C

Instructor:

Stefan Brass (sbrass@sis.pitt.edu)

Address:

University of Pittsburgh
School of Information Sciences / Dept. of Inf. Sci. and Telecommunications (DIST)
135 N. Bellefield Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA

Office:

Room 726, SIS Building

Phone:

(412) 624-9404

Preconditions:

I assume that you have taken INFSCI 2710 or have equivalent knowledge about databases. Note that INFSCI 2610 (Data Structures) is a precondition for INFSCI 2710, and you really should know about B-trees and merge sort. I also assume that logic does not deter you, and that you are also interested in efficient query evaluation.

Grading:

There will be no exams. Grading will be based on your presentations about research articles (including short written summaries or copies of your transparencies), and on your activity during the discussions in class. You will have to give between 2 and 6 presentations of 30 minutes (or alternatively 1 hour). Probably you will end up giving three presentations (since I will also talk about deductive databases), but it depends on very active (and long) discussions. If we don't get in-class discussions running, you will have to give more talks. So please read all papers (at least quickly), not only the ones about which you have to give a presentation. Only then you will be able to contribute to the discussions. The discussion and brainstorming during the class is very important to me.

Course Schedule (Under Construction)

There will be no class on March 6 due to the Spring Recess.

1. January 11: Introduction to Deductive Databases I
   What is a deductive database system? First Datalog programming exercises, comparison with SQL. Advantages of integrated systems consisting of DBMS and programming language. Declarativity.
   • My Transparencies: 1. Deductive Databases I (Introduction)
   • CORAL
   • Aditi
   • XSB
   • LOLA (Deductive Database System)
   • NCM Validity [Who killed Agatha?] [Who keeps fish?]
   • Relationlog (Persistent Deductive Database System)
   • ConceptBase: A Deductive Object Manager for Meta Databases
   • ROCK & ROLL: Deductive Object Oriented Database System
   • Active Deductive Object-Oriented Databases
   • Datalog++   [Download]
   • WWW Virtual Library: Logic Programming
   • The Prolog Home Page
   • Prolog Standard
   • Practical Standard Prolog Courseware Initiative
   • ECLiPSe Prolog [Earlier ECRC Site]
   • Quintus Prolog [Quintus Objects] [Manual] [Manual Frame]
   • SICStus Prolog
   • IF/Prolog
   • Logic Programming Associates (LPA)
   • SWI Prolog
   • GNU Prolog [GNU]
   • CMU Logic Programming Repository
   • Mercury Project
   • The Gödel Programming Language
   • Association of Logic Programming
   • Sixteenth International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP'99) [Conference Website]
   • DOOD'2000: Sixth International Conference on Rules and Objects in Databases
   • CL'2000: First International Conference on Computational Logic
   • Second International Workshop on Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages (PADL'00)
   • 12th International Conference on Applications of Prolog (INAP'99)
   • Practical Applications of Prolog'1998 (Conference)
   • Practical Application of Constraint technology and Logic Programming'1999 (Conference)
2. January 18: Introduction to Deductive Databases II
   How to give good talks.
   Features of deductive databases. Why are deductive databases good for web applications? History of the Field.
3. January 24: XML
   Marut: Introduction to XML
   • Bert Bos: XML in 10 points
   • XML 1.0 (W3C Recommendation) (Official Specification)
   • XML FAQ
   • Jon Bosak: XML, Java, and the future of the Web
   • Jon Bosak and Tim Bray: XML and the Second-Generation Web (Scientific American)
   • Pittsburgh XML/SGML User's Group
   • xmlTree: Directory of XML content on the Web
     http://www.xmltree.com/
   • CommerceNet's XML Exchange
     http://www.xmlx.com/
   • Schema.Net: The XML Schema Site
     http://www.schema.net/
   • Jon Bosak: Religion Dataset 2.00
     http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/sun-info/standards/xml/eg/rel200.zip
   • DTDs and Schemas
   • Opera 4.0 Browser (contains XML support)
   • XML Songs
4. January 31: DOM, Object-Oriented Databases, ODMG Object Model
   Susan: The Document Object Model
   • Document Object Model (DOM)
   Shin: The ODMG Object-Oriented Data Model
   • ODMG (Object Data Management Group)
   • R. Cattell, Editor: The Object Oriented Database Standard: ODMG 2.0
5. February 7: OQL, Semistructured Data
   Chatree: OQL
   • R. Cattell, Editor: The Object Oriented Database Standard: ODMG 2.0
   • Sophie Cluet: Designing OQL: Allowing Objects to be Queried.
     Journal of Information Systems, 1998.
     http://www-rocq.inria.fr/~cluet/
   Jong-Hoon: Semistructured Data Model (OEM)
   • Serge Abiteboul/Peter Buneman/Dan Suciu: Data on the Web: From Relations to Semistructured Data and XML.
     Chapter 1: Introduction, Chapter 2: A Syntax for Data.
   • Serge Abiteboul: Querying Semi-Structured Data.
     International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT), 1997.
     http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/papers/icdt97.semistructured.ps
   • Peter Buneman: Semistructured Data (Tutorial).
     Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS), 1997.
     http://db.cis.upenn.edu/Publications/
6. February 14: Semistructured Data, XML Query Languages
   Ratchata: Lorel.
   • Serge Abiteboul/Peter Buneman/Dan Suciu: Data on the Web: From Relations to Semistructured Data and XML.
     Chapter 4: Query Languages.
   • S. Abiteboul, D. Quass, J. McHugh, J. Widom, J. Wiener: The Lorel Query Language for Semistructured Data.
     International Journal on Digital Libraries, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 66--88, 1997.
     http://www-db.stanford.edu/
   Siripun: XML-QL.
   • Alin Deutsch, Mary Fernandez, Dana Florescu, Alon Levy, Dan Suciu: A query language for XML.
     In Proceedings of the Eights International World Wide Web Conference (WWW8), 1999.
     http://www.research.att.com/~suciu/
     http://www8.org/w8-papers/1c-xml/query/query.html
   • Alin Deutsch, Mary Fernandez, Daniela Florescu, Alon Levy, Dan Suciu: XML-QL: A Query Language for XML.
     Submission to the World Wide Web Consortium 19-August-1998.
     http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-xml-ql/
   • Serge Abiteboul/Peter Buneman/Dan Suciu: Data on the Web: From Relations to Semistructured Data and XML.
     Chapter 5: Query Languages for XML.
7. February 21: XML Query Languages, XML Databases
   Pantipa: XQL.
   • Jonathan Robie, Joe Lapp, David Schach: XML Query Language (XQL).
     W3C Query Languages Workshop, 1998.
     http://www.w3.org/TandS/QL/QL98/pp/xql.html
   • David Schach, Joe Lapp, Jonathan Robie: Querying and Transforming XML.
     W3C Query Languages Workshop, 1998.
     http://www.w3.org/TandS/QL/QL98/pp/query-transform.html
   • Jonathan Robie: The Design of XQL.
     http://www.texcel.no/whitepapers/xql-design.html
   • W3C: Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL).
     http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/
   Jiwu: eXcelon
   • eXcelon corp.
8. February 28: Database Techniques for the WWW, Deductive DBs
   Lei: Database Techniques for the World Wide Web
   • Daniela Florescu, Alon Levy and Alberto Mendelzon: Database Techniques for the World Wide Web: A Survey.
     ACM SIGMOD Record 27:3, September 1998, 59-74.
     http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~mendel/papers.html
   • David Konopnicki, Oded Shmueli: Bringing Database Functionality to the World-Wide Web.
     Proc. International Workshop on the Web and Databases (LNCS 1590), 1998.
     http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~konop/
   Stefan: Datalog Syntax and Semantics
9. March 6: Spring Break! No Classes!
   
10. March 13: Deductive Databases II
    Stefan: Datalog Semantics, Bottom-Up Evaluation.
    • Deductive Databases II: Bottom-Up Evaluation
11. March 20: More XML Query Languages
    Susan: XQuery
    • Steven J. DeRose: XQuery: A unified syntax for linking and querying general XML documents.
      W3C Query Languages Workshop (QL'98).
      http://www.w3.org/TandS/QL/QL98/pp/xquery.html
    Marut: XML-GL
    • Stefano Ceri, Sara Comai, Ernesto Damiani, Piero Fraternali, Stefano Paraboschi, Letizia Tanca:
      XML-GL: A Graphical Language for Querying and Reshaping XML Documents.
      W3C Query Languages Workshop (QL'98).
      http://www.w3.org/TandS/QL/QL98/pp/xml-gl.html
12. March 27: Searching on the Web / Web Query Languages
    Lei: Google
    • http://www.google.com
    • Sergey Brin, Lawrence Page: The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.
      7th International World Wide Web Conference (1998). http://www7.scu.edu.au/programme/fullpapers/1921/com1921.htm
    Shi: WebSQL
    • A. Mendelzon, G. Mihaila, T. Milo: Querying the World Wide Web.
      Journal of Digital Libraries 1(1), pp. 68-88, 1997.
      http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~websql/
13. April 3: Searching the Web / Storing XML Data
    Ratchata: Exploiting Geographical Location of Web Pages
    • Orkut Buyukkokten , Junghoo Cho, Hector Garcia-Molina, Luis Gravano: Exploiting geographical location information of web pages.
      Proceedings of Workshop on Web Databases (WebDB'99) held in conjunction with ACM SIGMOD'99, June 1999.
      http://www.stanford.edu/~orkut/pubs.html
    Jiwu: STORED
    • Alin Deutsch, Mary Fernandez, Dan Suciu: Storing semistructured data with STORED.
      In Proceedings of the ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data , 1999.
      http://www.research.att.com/~suciu/
14. April 10: No Seminar! Moved to April 18.
    
15. April 17: Web Data Mining / Storing XML Data
    Siripun: WUM - A Web Utilization Miner
    • WUM Project Homepage
      http://wum.wiwi.hu-berlin.de/
    • Myra Spiliopoulou and Lukas C. Faulstich: WUM: A Tool for Web Utilization Analysis.
      In EDBT Workshop WebDB'98.
      http://wum.wiwi.hu-berlin.de/wumDescription.html
    Pantipa: W3QS
    • David Konopnicki and Oded Shmueli: Information Gathering in the WWW: The W3QL Query Language and the W3QS System.
      ACM TODS 23(4), Dec. 1998.
      http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~konop/
16. April 18: Web Search Agents / Web Site Management Systems
    Jong-hoon: Ahoy!
    • Jonathan Shakes, Marc Langheinrich, Oren Etzioni: Dynamic Reference Sifting: A Case Study in the Homepage Domain
      Proceedings of the Sixth International World Wide Web Conference, pp.189-200, 1997. http://centauri-prime.cs.washington.edu:8000/doc/paper.html
    • http://centauri-prime.cs.washington.edu:8000/
    Chatree: Strudel
    • M. Fernandez, D. Suciu, I. Tatarinov: Declarative Specification of Data-Intensive Web Sites.
      USENIX Conference on Domain-Specific Languages, 1999. http://www.research.att.com/~mff/strudel/doc/files/final.ps
    • Strudel Web-Site Management System, User's Guide, Version 0.8
      http://www.research.att.com/~mff/strudel/doc/
    • Alon Levy, Daniela Florescu, Dan Suciu, Jaewoo Kang, Mary Fernandez: Catching the boat with Strudel: Experiences with a web-site management system.
      SIGMOD , 1998.
      http://www.research.att.com/~mff/strudel/doc/files/sigmod98.ps.gz
    • Mary Fernandez, Alon Levy, Dan Suciu, Dana Florescu: Verifying Integrity Constraints on Web Sites.
      International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 1999.
      http://www.research.att.com/~mff/strudel/doc/files/paper.ps
17. April 24: Deductive Databases
    

Other Relevant Papers

Overview Papers:

• Jennifer Widom: Data Management for XML, Research Directions
  A postscript version of this document as of July 1999 appears in IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin, Special Issue on XML, 22(3):44-52, September 1999.
• Alon Levy: More on Data Management for XML.

• Brian Pinkerton: Finding What People Want: Experiences with the WebCrawler.

• Arnaud Sahuguet, Fabien Azavant: Building light-weight wrappers for legacy Web data-sources using W4F.
  International Conference on Very Large Databases (VLDB), 1999.
  http://db.cis.upenn.edu/Publications/
• Brad Adelberg: NoDoSE: A Tool for Semi-Automatically Extracting Structured and Semistructured Data from Text Documents.
  SIGMOD, 1998.
  http://www.cs.nwu.edu/~adelberg/index.html

Information Sources in the Web

• Database Systems and Logic Programming (Bibliography Server)
• ACM Digital Library
• CoRR -- A Computing Research Repository (More Information)
• Summer School in (Constraint) Logic Programming - August 1999.
• ALS, Inc. (ALS Prolog)
• Matthias Klusch (Ed.): Intelligent Information Agents: Agent-Based Information Discovery and Management on the Internet
• Internet Pioneers [Alternative Site]
• W3C Query Languages Workshop (QL'98)
• Home Page of Paul Tarau
• Pittsburgh Area SGML/XML Lecture Series
• Standard Prolog Courseware Initiative
• WebNet Journal
• Call for Papers, Special Issue of "WWW Journal" on "WWW Data Management"
• Homepage of Sanjay Kumar Madria
• WEBKDD'99
• Notification Services (Project at FU Berlin)
• GroveMinder
• Accessibility and Distribution of Information on the Web
• Homepage of C. Lee Giles
• Homepage of Steve Lawrence
• xmlbooks.com (site created by Charles Goldfarb, the father of SGML)
• International Workshop on the World-Wide Web and Conceptual Modeling (WWWCM'99)
• Tutorial by Paul Prescod on forest automata theory as a formalism for markup languages
• PittMark (Pittsburgh Special Interest Group in Markup Languages
• Article about Tim Berners-Lee and the future of the Web (USA Weekend magazine)
• Apache XML Project
• Second International Workshop on Advanced Issues of E-Commerce and Web-based Information Systems (WECWIS 2000)
• Netbib Search
• IBM Almaden Research Center
• ACM Hypertext 2000
• Course on Design of Multi-Agent Systems
• eXelon (Object Design)
• Tamino (Software AG)
• Web Data Mining
• United States Government: Electronic Commerce Policy"
• E-Commerce@NC State
• Sixth International Conference on Rules and Objects in Databases (DOOD'2000)
• WWW8 Conference Papers
• International Masters Program in Computational Logic (Dresden/Germany)
• First International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies (EC-Web 2000)
• WebDB 2000 [Alternate Website
• Understanding XSLT
• The XML Bible
• WebDB'99: Second International Workshop on the Web and Databases
• Grants for HP E-Commerce Software
• Red Herring (Magazine: "The Business of Technology")

Stefan Brass (sbrass@sis.pitt.edu), June 07, 1999

Original URL: http://www2.sis.pitt.edu/~sbrass/sem00/   [HTML 3.2 Checked]