Data-driven Optimization of Search Service Composition for Answering Multi-domain Queries

Abstract

Answering multi-domain queries requires the combination of knowledge from various domains. Such queries are inadequately answered by general-purpose search engines, because domain- specific systems typically exhibit sophisticated knowledge about their own fields of expertise. Moreover, multi-domain queries typically require combining in the result domain knowledge possibly coming from multiple web resources, therefore conventional crawling and indexing techniques, based on individual pages, are not adequate. In this paper we present a conceptual framework for addressing the composition of search services for solving multi-domain queries. The approach consists in building an infrastructure for search service composition that leaves within each search system the responsibility of maintaining and improving its domain knowledge, and whose main challenge is to provide the “glue” between them; such glue is expressed in the format of joins upon search service results, and for this feature we regard our approach as “data-driven”. We present an overall architecture, and the work that has been done so far in the development of some of the main modules.