CSCI 599: Information Integration on the Web

Spring 2002

Instructor: Craig Knoblock (knoblock@isi.edu)

Office Hours:

• Thursday 12:45 - 1:45 (PHE 416)
• Thursday   4:50 - 5:20 (THH 112)

Teaching Assistant: Ion Muslea (muslea@isi.edu)

Office Hours:

• Tuesday      2:50 - 4:50 (PHE 416 / SAL 200C)

Meeting Time:

• Thursday 2:00-4:50 (THH 112)

Location:

• THH 112

There is an abundance of data available on the Internet and there are many opportunities to combine this information to build new applications and tools. However, there are many obstacles to exploiting the available data. In many cases the information is not available in a structured representation, it is complicated to navigate to the required information, the format of the information changes over time, and the terminology used to describe the data varies from one data source to the next.

This course will focus on the basic foundations and techniques in Information Integration as it applies to the Web. There has been a great deal of interest and research over the last few years on this topic and the course will cover the research and tools for addressing the technical problems. The topics covered will include structured data representation such as XML, view integration techniques, machine learning techniques for turning web sites into structured data sources, high-performance query execution systems based on dataflow, constraint-based integration systems, and approaches to resolving naming inconsistencies across sites.

The class will be run as a lecture course with lots student participation and hands-on experience. As an integral part of the course each student will develop and build their own integrated Web application using the research and tools covered in the class.

• Prerequisites: CS561a -- Introduction to AI
• Grading:
  • Homework: 30%
  • Class participation: 20%
  • Course project: 50%
• Books: There is no required textbook. We will be reading technical papers on each topic.

Course Syllabus and Schedule

• January 10
  • Introduction
  • Overview of the course
  • Application demonstrations
  • Course requirements
  • Course projects

• January 17
  • Information Integration
  • .Net Framework (Snehal Thakkar, Phd Student)

• January 24
  • Wrapper Learning (Ion Muslea, Phd Student)
  • Agent Builder (Snehal Thakkar, Phd Student)
  • .Net Homework Due

• January 31
  • Wrapper Maintenance
  • Agent Builder (Ion Muslea, Phd Student)
  • Wrapper Homework 1 Due

• February 7
  • Query Plan Execution
    • Dataflow architectures
    • Adaptive execution strategies
  • Theseus Agent Execution System (Greg Barish, PhD Student)
  • Wrapper Homework 2 Due

• February 14
  • View Integration (Jose Luis Ambite, Research Scientist)
  • Speculative Execution in Theseus (Greg Barish, PhD Student)
  • Theseus Homework 1 Due

• February 21
  • The Semantic Web (Prof. Yolanda Gil)
  • XML Query Processing
  • Written Proposals Due

• February 28
  • Heracles Constraint Integration Engine
  • Theseus Homework 2 Due

• March 7
  • Object Alignment
    • Record Linkage
    • IR Techniques
    • Machine learning

• March 14
  • No class! (Spring break)

• March 21
  • Query Reformulation
  • Project Status Report Due

• March 28
  • Query Optimization

• April 4
  • Case Studies of Integration Systems:
    • Ariadne
    • Havasu/Emerac
    • Information Manifold/InfoMaster
    • Tsimmis/Hermes
    • Telegraph/Tukwila
    • Niagaa

• April 11
  • Geospatial Data Integration

• April 18
  • Project Presentations

• April 25
  • No Class!

• April 30
  • Project Presentations 2-4pm (Final Exam Slot)

Course Materials: Notes, Slides, Papers, and Homeworks

• Lecture 1:
  • Papers
    • Modeling Web Sources for Information Integration
      C. Knoblock, S. Minton, J.L. Ambite, N. Ashish, P. Modi, I. Muslea, A. Philpot, S. Tejada.
      In Proceedings of the 15th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1998.
    • The TheaterLoc Application
      G. Barish, C. Knoblock, Y.-S. Chen, S. Minton, A. Philpot, C. Shahabi.
      In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence
      (IAAI-200), Austin, TX, 2000.
  • Slides
    • Course Introduction
    • Overview of the Ariadne Project
    • The TheaterLoc Case Study

• Lecture 2:
  • Papers
    • Compiling Source Descriptions for Efficient and Flexible Information Integration
      J.L. Ambite, C, Knoblock, I. Muslea, A. Philpot
      Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, vol 16, p. 149-187, 2001.
    • .Net
      
  • Slides
    • Axiom Compilation
    • .Net
  • Homework-1 (was due on Jan. 31, 2002)
    • The Assignement (Word version) (PDF version)
    • .Net zip file

• Lecture 3:
  • Papers
    • Hierarchical Wrapper Induction for Semistructured Information Sources
      I. Muslea, S. Minton, C. Knoblock
      Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 4:93-114, 2001.
    • Agent Builder Tutorial (password protected, see email message)
  • Slides
    • Wrapper Induction
    • Agent Builder
  • Homework-2 (was due on Feb. 7, 2002)
    • The Assignement

• Lecture 4:
  • Papers
    • Wrapper Maintenance: A Machine Learning Approach
      K. Lerman, C. Knoblock, S. Minton
  • Slides
    • Wrapper Maintenance
    • Advanced Agent Builder
  • Homework-3 (was due on Feb. 14, 2002)
    • The Assignement

• Lecture 5:
  • Papers
    • A Dataflow Approach ti Information Management
      G.Barish, C. Knoblock, S. Minton (IC-AI 2000)
    • Spleculative Execution for Information Gathering Plans
      G. Barish, C. Knoblock (AIPS-2002)
  • Slides
    • Theseus
    • Speculative Execution

• Lecture 6:
  • Papers
    • Logic-Based Techniques in Data Integration
      in J. Minker (ed.): "Logic-based Artificial Intelligence"
      A. Levy
  • Slides
    • Theseus
    • Data Integration
  • Homework-4 (due Feb. 28, 2002)
    • The Assignement
    • Theseus Software
    • Theseus Manual

• Lecture 7:
  • Papers
    • The Semantic Web
      TIM BERNERS-LEE, JAMES HENDLER and ORA LASSILA
    • A Comparison of Semantic Markup Languages
      Y. Gil and V. Ratnakar
  • Slides
    • Semantic Web
    • NetworkQueryEngines
  • Homework-5 (due March 7, 2002)
    • The Assignement

• Lecture 8:
  • Papers
    • Learning object identification rules for information integration
      S. Tejada, C. Knoblock, S. Minton
      Information Systems, 26(8), 2001.
    • Reconciling Schemas of Disparate Data Sources: A Machine Learning Approach
      A. Doan, P. Domingos, and A. Halevy
      Proceedings of the ACM SIGMOD Conf. on Management of Data (SIGMOD-2001)
  • Slides
    • Object Identification
      
    • Learning to Translate between Ontologies
      The IJCAI-2001 Workshop on Learning Ontologies , Seattle, WA, August 2001, by Alon Halevy.
    • Data Integration: A "Killer App" for Multi-Strategy Learning
      The 5th Int. Workshop on Multi-Strategy Learning, Portugal, 2000, by Pedro Domingos
  • Homework-6 (due March 21, 2002)
    • The Assignement

• Lecture 9:
  • Papers
    • Learning Plan Rewriting Rules
      J.L. Ambite, C. Knoblock, S. Minton
      
    • Mixed-Initiative, Multi-Source Information Assistants
      C. Knoblock, S. Minton, J.L. Ambite, M. Muslea, J. Oh, M. Frank
      WWW-10
  • Slides
    • Constraint Integration
      
    • Planning by Rewriting
      

• Lecture 10:
  • Papers
    • Selectively materializing data in mediators by analyzing user queries
      Naveen Ashish, Craig A. Knoblock, and Cyrus Shahabi
      In the Fourth International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS), Edinburgh, Scotland, September 1999.
  • Slides
    • Selective Materialization
      
    • XQuery
      
  • Homework-7 (due March 28, 2002)
    • The Assignement