NETMARK: A Schema-Less Extension for Relational Databases for Managing Semi-structured Data Dynamically

Abstract

Abstract. Object-Relational database management system is an integrated hybrid cooperative approach to combine the best practices of both the relational model utilizing SQL queries and the object-oriented, semantic paradigm for supporting complex data creation. In this paper, a highly scalable, information on demand database framework, called NETMARK, is introduced. NETMARK takes advantages of the Oracle 8i object-relational database using physical addresses data types for very efficient keyword search of records spanning across both context and content. NETMARK was originally developed in early 2000 as a research and development prototype to solve the vast amounts of unstructured and semi-structured documents existing within NASA enterprises. Today, NETMARK is a flexible, high-throughput open database framework for managing, storing, and searching unstructured or semi-structured arbitrary hierarchal models, such as XML and HTML.

The NASA Program Management Tool: A New Vision in Business Intelligence

“…At the heart of PMT is a high-throughput information integration and management system, also developed at NASA, called Netmark-XDB [1]. The key design considerations held in the Netmark system design are outlined below:…”

Contextualized Search and Faceted Browsing of Heterogeneous ISS Mission Operations Data

“…For example, on Amazon.com, searching for "Batman" returns a set of results in the main section of the window and the left-hand column lists "Books (14,759), Toys & Games (1,588 As illustrated in Figure 2, the existing PVCS web-based search interface is time-consuming to use and restrictive users seeking all records regarding a particular ISS subsystem or component and must perform a large number of search operations to answer a simple question such as, "What problems have been reported and resolved regarding GPS software?" Searching each set of PVCS records requires multiple user operations in a complex query interface.…”

Semi-Structured Data Management in the Enterprise: A Nimble, High-Throughput, and Scalable Approach

“…We will not delve into the complete architectural details in this paper and refer the reader to [13] for those.…”

“…Note that NETMARK serves as a semi-structured data management system and also provides (integrated) access to legacy data sources in enterprises [13]. The NETMARK system architecture is first presented.…”

“…While there are indeed systems available for managing semi-structured or unstructured data, such as DocuShare [6] from Xerox, products from companies like Verity 2 and Autonomy 3 and research systems for semi-structured or XML data management [9,11,15], we have designed a system that is significantly more 1 Indeed, 80% of the enterprise data is stored in such unstructured or semi-structured documents, instead of in databases, according to research firm Gartner 2 www.verity.com 3 www.autonomy.com flexible and simple from a user perspective and scalable from an application development perspective. We describe the NETMARK system [13] that the NASA Ames Research Center 4 has developed and that has been used for several NASA 5 enterprise data and project management applications. The focus of this paper will particularly be on the data storage and query processing aspects of NETMARK A key distinguishing feature of the NETMARK approach (vis-à-vis other semi-structured data or XML data management systems) is that it does not require users (or administrators) to have to formally define the semantics of the data (schemas) in the documents or collections of documents.…”