While many people predict that data will migrate to an XML representation, I suggest that the migration will be extremely slow and a lot of useful information will remain in HTML for the foreseeable future. One reason is that there is simply too much investment to more to a new format. Another is that HTML, as a presentation markup language, is better suited than pure XML to communicate information to human beings. For these reasons I have worked on developing Omini , and OminiSearch , and assisted Wei Han in developing XWrapElite . Our AQR project works to provide effective query routing that not only minimizes the query response time and the overall processing cost, but also eliminates a lot of unnecessary communication overhead over the global networks and over the individual information sources.
Query routing dynamically chooses relevant sources from all available sources to answer queries.
Data often changes, but not always in interesting ways. Detecting useful changes is important in a wide range of applications, from military combat situations, to stock prices, to sensor data. In each application users need to be kept current on some important events, or trend of events, while they are shielded from the majority of 'uninteresting' events. We have applied these ideas on both traditional databases and web content. One current topic of research is ensuring the scalability of monitoring to millions of users.