Principles of Database Query Processing for Advanced Applications

The aim of query processing is to find information in one or more databases and deliver it to the user quickly and efficiently. Traditional techniques work well for databases with standard, single-site relational structures, but databases containing more complex and diverse types of data demand new query processing and optimization techniques.

Most real-world data is not well structured. Today's databases typically contain much non-structured data such as text, images, video, and audio, often distributed across computer networks. In this complex milieu
(typified by the world wide Web), efficient and accurate query processing becomes quite challenging.

Principles of Database Query Processing for Advanced Applications teaches the basic concepts and techniques of query processing and optimization for a variety of data forms and database systems, whether structured or unstructured.

* This is the only reference work that covers query processing and optimization techniques for structured and unstructured data, written with the non-expert in mind, with a minimum of mathematical details.
* This book teaches query processing techniques for multimedia, object-oriented, deductive, parallel, and distributed databases, as well as heterogeneous multidatabase systems, fuzzy relational databases, and
techniques for different types of unstructured data.
* Each chapter contains examples, tables and figures, class exercises, and a detailed bibliography.

Clement Yu holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University, and is currently a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He served as chairman of the ACM Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval, as an advisory committee member to the National Science Foundation, and as general chair/program committee chair to several database/information retrieval conferences and workshops. He has consulted for System Development Corporation (now Unisys) on distributed query processing, for MCC and Unisql on query processing in heterogeneous database systems, worked on a fuzzy database system project for Omron Corporation. He is a member of Linden Technology which applies associative memory for advanced database applications. Dr. Yu is an associate editor/on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, the Journal of Distributed and Parallel Databases and the International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering. His research interests include database management, information retrieval for multimedia, and applications to medicine.

Weiyi Meng holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the State University of New York, Binghamton. His research interests include heterogeneous database systems, query processing, Internet-based information retrieval, view maintenance and fuzzy databases. He has published in many well-established journals and conference proceedings.