On User-Centric XML Keyword Search

Due its Capabilities, nowadays, remarkable amounts of data are stored in the XML format. In fact, XML is known as a widely-accepted standard for data storing, management and exchange. In this regard, processing tasks over such data, specifically, search and retrieval, have gained an increasing attention and importance. Therefore, many research studies have been conducted around the topics. Since most of the users-who search over XML data- have no knowledge of underlying structure of target data, providing them with some type of instructions and guidance will result in increasing the quality and efficiency of the search (retrieval) process. Further, regarding the revisited position (role) of humans in the computing processes –especially within the past decade- it recently became a mainstream to leverage humans ability in order to improve search, retrieval and data manipulating-related processes. Following this trend, some studies have been conducted in the context of XML. Since, these works performed in different directions, lack of a comprehensive study for organizing the literature and providing a reference point as well as road map for the future studies in the field is obvious. To fill this important gap, this paper aimed to provide a broad view of the field to investigate different aspects of the topic in the form presenting an overview.