factoring web tables
Automatic interpretation of web tables can enable database-like semantic search over the plethora of information stored in tables on the web. Our table interpretation method presented here converts the two-dimensional hierarchy of table headers, which provides a visual means of assimilating complex data, into a set of strings that is more amenable to algorithmic analysis of table structure. We show that Header Paths, a new purely syntactic representation of visual tables, can be readily transformed ("factored") into several existing representations of structured data, including category trees and relational tables. Detailed examination of over 100 tables reveals what table features require further work.
table headers header paths category trees relational tables table analysis algebraic factorization table syntax