Liquid Query on Yahoo! Query Language (YQL).

We propose the Liquid Query paradigm, that supports the users in finding responses to multi-domain queries through an exploratory information seeking approach, upon structured information collected from Web documents, deep Web data sources, and personal data repositories, wrapped by means of a uniform notion of search service. Liquid Query aims at filling the gap between generalized search systems, which are unable to find information spanning multiple topics, and domain-specific search systems, which cannot go beyond their domain limits. Liquid Query provides a set of interaction primitives that let users make questions and explore results spanning over multiple sources, thus getting closer and closer to the sought information. We demonstrate our approach with a prototype built upon the YQL (Yahoo! Query Language) framework.

In order to run the demo, the following requirements must be satisfied:

  • Google Gears must be installed on your machine. The prototype will automatically detect the presence of the browser plug-in and, in case, will re-direct you to the Google Gear Download page.
  • The prototype code makes extensive use of the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI V2.8.0) libraries. Cross-browser compatibility is therefore enforced by YUI, although some problems may manifest when running the prototype with Internet Explorer. The usage of other "Gears-enabled" browsers like Firefox or Google Chrome is currently recommended.


Disclaimers

The protoype uses as data back-end the Yahoo! Query Language platform (YQL). In details, the current version of the prototype makes extensive use of:

The reader can easily verify the current status of the YQL engine/services by querying one of the aforementioned service directly on the YQL console.
We have no control on the quality and stability of the data extracted from the YQL search services, therefore data inconsistencies in the extracted results can occur. Our usage of YQL is subject to the limits expressed by Yahoo! in the YQL description page (section Using YQL for Commercial and Non-Commercial Applications).


Implemented features

The prototype currently implements the following features:

  • join of two or more search service result-sets
  • operations at result-set level: more all (button), asking for more data in the joined set
  • operations at service level (left mouse button menu on * column header) show columns, expand to associated services (expansion applies only to instances selected through the checkbox), ask for more results for that service
  • operations at column level (left mouse button menu on column header) sort ascending and descending, cluster, hide
  • operations at result instance level: visualization of the geographical positions associated with an instance (Click button at the end of the row)


Example of query scenario

Queries demonstrated to work well in large metropolitan US areas (San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and so on). A possible demonstration scenario could be:

  • submit a query for a jazz concert in December 2009 in San Francisco, with 4-stars hotels
  • add or remove columns at will (e.g., add the start time or the image of concerts)
  • sort the results according to one or more criteria (sort asc or desc option)
  • see the map of one specific combination (click button at the end of the row, two items will be shown in the map)
  • cluster results by one or more attributes (cluster option)
  • select a one or two rows and expand the result table with information about restaurants (close restaurant option)
  • select a one or two rows and expand the result table with information about related events, i.e. more concerts occurring in subsequent dates (close events option)
  • see the map of one specific combination (click button at the end of the row, four items will be shown in the map)
  • ask for more results (more all button)
  • ask for additional results for just one service (more one option on, e.g., hotels)

You are now ready to access the DEMONSTRATION PROTOTYPE