Using a search engine to query a relational database

Abstract

While search engines are the most popular way to find information on the web, they are generally not used to query relational databases (RDBs). This paper describes a technique for making the data in an RDB accessible to standard search engines. The technique involves using a URL to express queries and creating a wrapper that can then process the URL-query and generate web pages that contain the answer to the query as well as links to additional data. By following these links, a crawler is able to index the RDB along with all the URL-queries. Once the content and their corresponding URL-queries have been indexed, a user may submit keyword queries through a standard search engine and receive up-to-date database information. The system was then tested to determine if it could return results that were similar to those submitted using SQL. We also looked at whether a standard search engine such as Google could actually index the database content appropriately.