Application of OODB and SGML techniques in text database: an electronic dictionary system

  • Authors:
  • Jian Zhang

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Pennsylvania, Department of Computer and Information Science, Philadelphia PA

  • Venue:
  • ACM SIGMOD Record
  • Year:
  • 1995

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Abstract

An electronic dictionary system (EDS) is developed with object-oriented database techniques based on ObjectStore. The EDS is composed of two parts: the Database Building Program (DBP), and the Database Querying Program (DQP). DBP reads in a dictionary encoded in SGML tags, and builds a database composed of a collection of trees which holds dictionary entries, and several lists which contain items of various lexical categories. With text exchangeability introduced by the SGML, DBP is able to accommodate dictionaries of different languages with different structures, after easy modification of a configuration file. The tree model, the Category Lists, and an optimization procedure enables DQP to quickly accomplish complicated queries, including context requirements, via simple SQL-like syntax and straightforward search methods. Results show that compared with relational database, DQP enjoys much higher speed and flexibility. With EDS this paper demonstrates how to apply OODBMS's to systems that handle text information with strong yet varied intrinsic hierarchies.