VLDS 2012 - The Second International Workshop on Searching and Integrating New Web Data Sources (VLDS 2012)

First Call for Papers
*VLDS 2012*
*Very Large Data Search*
Second International Workshop on ?Searching and Integrating New Web Data Sources
http://vlds.search-computing.net/
*CONTEXT*
Recent years are witnessing an exponential growth of data providers available on the Web. These providers offer a plethora of different ways of accessing their data sources, spanning from APIs (e.g., Google APIs, location based APIs, and so on) to proprietary query languages (such as Yahoo! Query Language, YQL) to endpoints accessible through standard query languages (e.g., SPARQL). This trend is associated with the increased tendency to labeling, tagging, and semantic linking of data, as pushed also by social networking applications (e.g., social bookmarking, user networks, and so on).
These data sources expose their data as semi-structured information (e.g., JSON, XML, …) and an increasing number also provide the information as linked in the so called linked data cloud, with URI-based references between resources. Linked Open Data (LOD) emerges as a best practice for exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data, information, and knowledge, with potential for solving the data integration problem.
This is a major change of paradigm. On one side, this augments the power of search methods which access and query information with respect to the old-fashioned page based Web paradigm. On the other side, though, this challenges the current information retrieval, data integration, and Web search practices to comply with the new shape and capabilities of new Web data sources.
Searching for data upon such new, Web-enabled data sources has the potential of reshaping the scenario of current Web applications, going beyond the capabilities of conventional search engines in solving search problems, but it also presents new technical challenges. Most of these new Web sources provide data related to vertical domains (e.g., locations, music, genes) that need to be properly described and conceptualized prior to being integrated. The SOA paradigm must be extended in order to better support ranking-based data extraction; solving data integration problems requires new solutions, including the use of universal URIs, efficient indexing, partial or approximate value matches.
Furthermore, modern applications, especially within mobile devices like smart phones, require to support continuous or push-based search to grant that the users are always up to date with the domain of interest, upon which they can also interact with other users (social applications) and with the data sources themselves (community-driven sources). Exploratory methods and context-aware paradigms must be offered to users of new search applications to infer information about the context of use and enrich the search criteria or to guide the selection and improvement of the current solutions, though a search process which goes beyond a single interaction. Finally, collaborative and social search is a new emerging trend that must be added as a key ingredient, with additional requirements.
*GOAL*
The goal of the VLDS workshop is to gather researchers and practitioners in the diverse fields related to data integration and search applications on the web at the purpose of discussing innovative strategies for combining search facilities with integration aspects for Web data sources. The workshop will represent a unique venue for discussing all the aspects related to the implementation, publication, and orchestration of services over new Web data sources, the most suitable paradigms to improve the user experience in context, as well as the application scenarios which may better benefit of these new technologies, including enterprise applications, recommender systems, and social search.
*TOPICS*
The topics of interest for this workshop include (but are not limited to):
* Methods and tools for Search Services, including:
- Modeling and Exposing search functionalities as services
- Deploying and Using search services
- Languages and platforms for composing search services
- Best practices and methodologies for designing and composing search services
- Mashup platforms and practices applied to search
* Methods and tools for deep web information access:
- Exploitation of public APIs for search (e.g., Google APIs, Yahoo Query Language ? YQL)
- Implementation issues of ranking, ordering, and chunking in queries on data sources
- Use of query languages (including SQL, SPARQL, XQuery) for deep web data sources
- Mashup platforms and practices for deep web data
* Methods and Tools for domain-specific search, including:
- Algorithms and tools for domain-specific or purpose-specific search
- Best practices and methodologies for domain or purpose-specific search
* Methods and Tools for Open Linked Data, including:
- Algorithms and tools for search and exploration over linked and semantically-enriched data
- Methods for preparing and labeling data to support search applications
* User experience of search
- User interfaces for search, including purpose- or domain-specific services
- Information exploration and exploratory search over Web structured, semi-structured and unstructured data
- Continuous, incremental and push-based search
* Applications of search
- Warehousing and integration of searchable data
- Enterprise search applications
- Social search
- Web recommender systems
*Benchmarks for search applications on integrated data
*WORKSHOP FORMAT*
The aim of the workshop is not only to share innovative ideas and results on the topics above but also to create a community of interest that flourishes during and after the workshop. We will exploit social networking as well as data publishing and curation tools to collect and maintain a body of knowledge related to the workshop, which includes not only the proceedings but also the discussed topics, materials, links, and datasets.
The workshop will also feature some invited talks on topics related to the workshop focus. Among others, we can already confirm a keynote speech by Gerhard Weikum.
* SUBMISSION AND PROCEEDINGS*
We solicit:
- regular research papers
- position/vision papers
- industrial/experience papers describing good data sets or well-engineered applications.
Papers must be submitted following the ACM SIG Proceedings Style, through the EasyChair submission system at: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vlds201... .
Maximum length is 6 pages for full research papers; and 4 pages for short papers, including position, vision, industrial, demonstration and experience papers.
All the accepted papers will be published in a WS-CEUR online volume before the workshop day. Papers, datasets, and other materials will be available on the workshop web site too.
In addition, authors of the best papers could consider submitting a journal version of their work to a VLDB Journal special issue that some of us are currently editing on “Structured, Social and Crowd-sourced Data on the Web” (http://vldb.org/vldb_journal/index.php/vldbj-speci..., deadline Sept. 15), and use the workshop as a venue for collecting feedbacks and suggestions.
*IMPORTANT DATES*
- Abstracts due: June 7, 2012
- Papers due: June 15, 2012
- Notification of acceptance: July 7, 2012
- Camera-ready due: July 15, 2012
*ORGANIZERS*
Marco Brambilla
Politecnico di Milano
http://home.dei.polimi.it/mbrambil
mbrambil-AT-elet.polimi.it
twitter: -AT-marcobrambi
Stefano Ceri
Politecnico di Milano
http://home.dei.polimi.it/ceri
ceri-AT-elet.polimi.it
Tim Furche
University of Oxford
http://furche.net/
Georg Gottlob
University of Oxford
http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/georg.gottlob/