Abstract: The present disclosure comprises systems and methods to mine association rules from a dataset provided in the input. This comprises methodologies for optimizing the dataset for efficient computation of association rules, other than methodologies for handling partially true data. Moreover, it includes methodologies for evaluating the mining process automatically and removing uninteresting rules. In addition, it includes methodologies for integrating experts in the evaluation of the rules. Finally, methodologies to automatically detect outliers, correct outliers, update truth values and complete missing data in the original dataset. The overall methodology is completely automated and provides numerous tuning parameters to fit most of the use cases, including a default value for each of the tuning parameters to simplify its usage.

Abstract: A computer-implemented method and a corresponding system for expanding an initially given input list of items from an application domain by similar or related items. The method operates on a computer-retrievable document repository containing a plurality of electronic documents. The method computes an expanded list of items from the initially given seed list by combining (i) methods for extracting candidate items that co-occur with already established items in selected lists contained in documents retrieved from said document store with (ii) knowledge-based inference tasks involving domain-specific logical facts and, in some embodiments also at least one domain-specific logical rule related to said application domain. By this combination, an improved item set expansion is obtained, which takes the particularities of the application domain into account, and which leads to a list expansion that may better fit a user's expectation.

Abstract: Methods and systems for enriching an information system containing information about companies with additional competitor information. The information system, which could be a database, a knowledge base, or a knowledge graph, is assumed to contain information about a plurality of single companies, the information comprising data such as industry codes, competitors, and possibly also keywords for each company. The disclosed methods determine new competitor pairs by combining (i) the generation of new competitor candidate pairs by inference from existing competitors and other company-specific knowledge with (ii) the validation of such competitor candidates pairs by checking for joint occurrence in documents of a document repository.

Abstract: The present disclosure comprises systems and methods to convert Existential Datalog source code into Differential Dataflow source code, whereby databases or knowledge graphs, some of whose relations are defined from other relations using Existential Datalog rules can be maintained incrementally.

Abstract: Methods for automatically generating a wrapper for extracting web data and corresponding computer systems are disclosed. In one arrangement, a first wrapper is used to generate a second wrapper. The first wrapper extracts target data from one or more target web pages hosted by one or more target web servers. The second wrapper is capable of extracting the same target data from the same one or more target web pages without using a web browser engine to perform a) sending requests to the one or more target web servers, and/or b) processing replies from the one or more target web servers. The generation of the second wrapper comprises analysing one or both of the following: (i) code defining the first wrapper, (ii) interactions between the first wrapper and the one or more target web servers that occur during execution of the first wrapper.

Abstract: Methods for automatically generating a wrapper for extracting web data and corresponding computer systems are disclosed. In one arrangement, a first wrapper is used to generate a second wrapper. The first wrapper extracts target data from one or more target web pages hosted by one or more target web servers. The second wrapper is capable of extracting the same target data from the same one or more target web pages without using a web browser engine to perform a) sending requests to the one or more target web servers, and/or b) processing replies from the one or more target web servers. The generation of the second wrapper comprises analysing one or both of the following: (i) code defining the first wrapper, (ii) interactions between the first wrapper and the one or more target web servers that occur during execution of the first wrapper.

Abstract: A system for automatically generating a wrapper for an entire website, the wrapper characterizing the structure of the website, the system having a plurality of functional elements, including at least one annotation module to classify components of a page and generate an annotated, a page classification module to identify functional and informational components of an annotated page, and an action module to identify an action to be taken to further navigate the website, wherein at least one of the annotation module, page classification module and action module is operable in response to a plurality of domain-specific rules, where a domain is understood as a conceptual domain such as real estate, used cars, or electronics.

Abstract: A system for automatically generating a wrapper for an entire website, the wrapper characterising the structure of the website, the system having a plurality of functional elements, including at least one annotation module to classify components of a page and generate an annotated, a page classification module to identify functional and informational components of an annotated page, and an action module to identify an action to be taken to further navigate the website, wherein at least one of the annotation module, page classification module and action module is operable in response to a plurality of domain-specific rules, where a domain is understood as a conceptual domain such as real estate, used cars, or electronics.

Abstract: A system for automatically generating a wrapper for an entire website, the wrapper characterising the structure of the website, the system having a plurality of functional elements, including at least one annotation module to classify components of a page and generate an annotated, a page classification module to identify functional and informational components of an annotated page, and an action module to identify an action to be taken to further navigate the website, wherein at least one of the annotation module, page classification module and action module is operable in response to a plurality of domain-specific rules, where a domain is understood as a conceptual domain such as real estate, used cars, or electronics.

Abstract: A method and a system for information extraction from Web pages formatted with markup languages such as HTML [8]. A method and system for interactively and visually describing information patterns of interest based on visualized sample Web pages [5,6,16-29]. A method and data structure for representing and storing these patterns [1]. A method and system for extracting information corresponding to a set of previously defined patterns from Web pages [2], and a method for transforming the extracted data into XML is described. Each pattern is defined via the (interactive) specification of one or more filters. Two or more filters for the same pattern contribute disjunctively to the pattern definition [3], that is, an actual pattern describes the set of all targets specified by any of its filters.

Abstract: The disclosed teachings provide methods and systems for efficient evaluation of XPath queries. In particular, the disclosed evaluation methods require only polynomial time with respect to the total size of an input XPath query and an input XML document. Crucial for the new methods is the notion of “context-value tables”. This idea can be further refined for queries in Core XPath and XSLT Patterns so as to yield even a linear time evaluation method. Moreover, the disclosed methods can be used for improving existing methods and systems for processing XPath expressions so to guarantee polynomial worst-case complexity.

Abstract: A method and a system for information extraction from Web pages formatted with markup languages such as HTML [8]. A method and system for interactively and visually describing information patterns of interest based on visualized sample Web pages [5,6,16-29]. A method and data structure for representing and storing these patterns [1]. A method and system for extracting information corresponding to a set of previously defined patterns from Web pages [2], and a method for transforming the extracted data into XML is described. Each pattern is defined via the (interactive) specification of one or more filters. Two or more filters for the same pattern contribute disjunctively to the pattern definition [3], that is, an actual pattern describes the set of all targets specified by any of its filters.

Abstract: The disclosed teachings provide methods and systems for efficient evaluation of XPath queries. In particular, the disclosed evaluation methods require only polynomial time with respect to the total size of an input XPath query and an input XML document. Crucial for the new methods is the notion of “context-value tables”. This idea can be further refined for queries in Core XPath and XSLT Patterns so as to yield even a linear time evaluation method. Moreover, the disclosed methods can be used for improving existing methods and systems for processing XPath expressions so to guarantee polynomial worst-case complexity.