Researchers try to develop better search engines
04 Nov 2010
Two University of Texas, Arlington, computer science engineering faculty are developing a new Internet search engine that treats the Web more like a massive database.
Chengkai Li and Gautam Das, from the department of computer science and engineering, have won a three-year, $499,713 National Science Foundation grant to develop a new search engine that uses simple queries to address complex information needs.
Their system allows searches involving multiple entities and assesses how entities are related.
''The beauty of this is that you can combine the simplicity of keyword search and the expressiveness of database query to find fascinating entities,'' Li said.
With existing search engines, a person looking for information about businesses started by UT Arlington graduates would have to break down their task into several separate searches, read many result pages and manually synthesize the information, Li said.
''Our system would allow us to simply write a database-style query that specifies what to do instead of the grueling details of how to do it,'' Li said. ''The system automatically processes the query and obtains answers, saving us from the painful steps of searching, reading, and re-searching.''
