A survey in indexing and searching XML documents

• Published in: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Vol. 53; no. 6; pp. 415 - 437
• Main Authors: Luk, Robert W.P., Leong, H.V., Dillon, Tharam S., Chan, Alvin T.S., Croft, W. Bruce, Allan, James
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company 01.04.2002; Wiley; Wiley Periodicals Inc
• Subjects: Algorithms; And; Data exchange; Electronic Libraries; Exact sciences and technology; Extensible Markup Language; Formats. Markup languages. Codification. Conversion; Indexing; Information and communication sciences; Information and document structure and analysis; Information processing and retrieval; Information retrieval; Information science. Documentation; Multilingualism; Online information retrieval; Polls & surveys; Proprietary; Sciences and techniques of general use; Search engines; Searches; Searching; Semantics; Word Processing; XML; Hong Kong China; Japan; China; Query language; Advantage; Vector space; Boolean logic; Object oriented; Document structure; XML language; Information retrieval; Probabilistic model; Models; Full text; Indexing
• ISSN: 1532-2882; 2330-1635; 1532-2890; 2330-1643
• DOI: 10.1002/asi.10056

XML holds the promise to yield (1) a more precise search by providing additional information in the elements, (2) a better integrated search of documents from heterogeneous sources, (3) a powerful search paradigm using structural as well as content specifications, and (4) data and information exchange to share resources and to support cooperative search. We survey several indexing techniques for XML documents, grouping them into flat‐file, semistructured, and structured indexing paradigms. Searching techniques and supporting techniques for searching are reviewed, including full text search and multistage search. Because searching XML documents can be very flexible, various search result presentations are discussed, as well as database and information retrieval system integration and XML query languages. We also survey various retrieval models, examining how they would be used or extended for retrieving XML documents. To conclude the article, we discuss various open issues that XML poses with respect to information retrieval and database research.