APPLICATIONS OF A WEB QUERY LANGUAGE

In this paper we report on our experience using WebSQL, a high level d eclarative query language for extracting information from the Web. Web SQL takes advantage of multiple index servers without requiring users to know about them, and integrates full-text with topology-based queri es. The WebSQL query engine is a library of Java classes, and WebSQL q ueries can be embedded into Java programs much in the same way as SQL queries are embedded in C programs. This allows us to access the Web f rom Java at a much higher level of abstraction than bare HTTP requests . We illustrate the use of WebSQL for application development by descr ibing two applications we are experimenting with: Web site maintenance and specialized index construction. We also sketch several other poss ible applications. Using the library, we have also implemented a clien t-server architecture that allows us to perform interactive intelligen t searches on the Web from an applet running on a browser. (C) 1997 Pu blished by Elsevier Science B.V.