Web Database Management Systems
Reading Report, due March
18, 1999 by 5 p.m.
You are required to provide a written report
of the papers we have written so far. You should work in groups of two
or three, smaller groups are not allowed. Your job is to evaluate the work
described in the papers presented in class between Jan 28 - Mar 4, 1999.
You should return a report of at least four at most five pages. You will
return three copies of your report by the due date.
Grading Policy
The grading will be based on peer-reviews.
Two of your peers will review your report. This means your group will have
to review two reports. I will review all reports. You will write a review
of the report that will be returned to you and me. You will be graded by
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%20 * 3, grades from peer reviews [including
my vote],
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%20 * 2, your reviews to your peers [judged by
me on the thoroughness and correctness of your review].
The review form will be available on the web
by the due date. You are required to fill these out and mail them to me
by April 1, 1999. No actual April fools day jokes are allowed on your reports,
but you are free to terrorize your friends in other ways you see fit.
Report Contents
Write an evaluation of the query languages
we have seen so far, this excludes the talks on SGML, Adaptive AI Sites
and the paper on "Web and Computation". Your evaluation should compare
and contrast these languages. In particular:
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Discuss briefly the strengths of each language.
Describe what type of applications this language will be useful for, what
type of users will use this language.
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Discuss the common features of several languages,
put into categories as much as you can. For example, simple categories
can be queries that return document, queries that return webs, queries
that consider document structure, etc.
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Discuss the unique features of each language.
In other words, write different functionalities of a language that cannot
be supported in any other, or is cumbersome to do so. Support your cases
with examples from that language whenever possible and explain why it cannot
be supported in any other language.
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Conclude with your personal view on the issue.
What is the most important problem in this area -i.e. querying of a "web
database"-? Do you think the work presented in these papers is going
to be used in any commercial product, what type of features are still missing?