Nov. 4 – Simplification and facilitation of web search via keywords: this is the aim of an ambitious international study led by a professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia: Francesco Guerra. Over 23 research European and international teams are involved in the analysis, design, development and evaluation of keyword search techniques for large amounts of structured data. The project is called “Keystone – Semantic keyword -based search on structured data sources” and is funded by an intergovernmental framework for European cooperation known as Cost (Cooperation europeenne dans le domaine de la recherche Scientifique et Technique). “Keystone” is led by Guerra and the Portuguese Jorge Cardoso. Guerra will be responsible for coordinating the project, which officially began on October 15, for the next 4 years. “Keystone” involves research groups from 23 countries (Croatia, Estonia , Finland, France , Macedonia, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy , Malta, Netherlands, Norway , Poland, Portugal , Romania, Serbia , Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom and Belgium), and colleagues from Bulgaria and Austria. It’s the first time since 1971, when this cooperation framework was first established, that a Modena professor is placed in charge of such an ambitious and complex project. “It is – says Guerra, professor of Computer Science at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia – an issue that has a major impact at both scientific and socio-economic development. At the scientific level, we have developed efficient techniques to search within documents (think of any search engine, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing). Unfortunately, the techniques so far developed are not performing well when applied to structured data (those within databases), where the information content is stored in tables and relational databases.” Within databases, it is possible to search by postulating queries, written in an appropriate language, which must comply with appropriate syntactic formalism. Only people familiar with these structures may actually find in the large datasets what they are looking for. “For this – adds Guerra – it is essential to develop techniques that allow everyone to look up information on these sources. Proposals have already been made: at the University of Modena, we have the DBGroup, a research group coordinated by Sonia Bergamaschi that developed a technique to explore literary texts. But more needs to be done in other fields.” Many studies have shown that most of the information present on the web is placed inside databases (called deep- web) and normal search engines do not always index this content. In addition, European institutions, national and local governments are promoting data publication on their activities in a structured format, thus allowing open access to the data. “Open data access – said Guerra – will be possible for anyone equipped with the necessary skills to read it correctly, thus contributing essential economic value.”
