A visual XML dataspace approach for satisfying ad hoc information needs: A Visual XML Dataspace Approach for Satisfying Ad Hoc Information Needs

AbstractDataspace systems constitute a recent data management approach that supports better cooperation among autonomous and heterogeneous data sources with which the user is initially unfamiliar. A central idea is to gradually increase the user's knowledge about the contents, structures, and semantics of the data sources in the dataspace. Without this knowledge, the user is not able to make sophisticated queries. The dataspace systems proposed so far are usually application specific. In contrast, our idea in this paper is to develop an application-independent extensible markup language XML dataspace system with versatile facilities. Unlike the other proposed dataspace systems, we show that it is possible to build an interface based on conventional visual tools in terms of which the user can satisfy his or her sophisticated information needs. In our system, the user does not need to master programming techniques nor the XML syntax, which provides a good starting point for its declarative use.