Returning Clustered Results for Keyword Search on XML Documents

Keyword search is an effective paradigm for information discovery and has been introduced recently to query XML documents. In this paper, we address the problem of returning clustered results for keyword search on XML documents. We first propose a novel semantics for answers to an XML keyword query. The core of the semantics is the conceptually related relationship between keyword matches, which is based on the conceptual relationship between nodes in XML trees. Then, we propose a new clustering methodology for XML search results, which clusters results according to the way they match the given query. Two approaches to implement the methodology are discussed. The first approach is a conventional one which does clustering after search results are retrieved; the second one clusters search results actively, which has characteristics of clustering on the fly. The generated clusters are then organized into a cluster hierarchy with different granularities to enable users locate the results of interest easily and precisely. Experimental results demonstrate the meaningfulness of the proposed semantics as well as the efficiency of the proposed methods.