XIRQL: A Query Language for Information Retrieval in XML Documents

Norbert Fuhr, Kai Großjohann

Abstract: Based on the document-centric view of XML, we present the query language XIRQL. Current proposals for XML query languages lack most IR-related features, which are weighting and ranking, relevance-oriented search, datatypes with vague predicates, and semantic relativism. XIRQL integrates these features by using ideas from logic-based probabilistic IR models, in combination with concepts from the database area. For processing XIRQL queries, a path algebra is presented, that also serves as a starting point for query optimization.