Instant search is an emerging information-retrieval paradigm in which a system finds answers to a query instantly while a user types in keywords character-by-character. Fuzzy search further improves user search experiences by finding relevant answers with keywords similar to query keywords. A main computational challenge in this paradigm is the high-speed requirement, i.e., each query needs to be answered within milliseconds to achieve an instant response and a high query throughput. At the same time, we also need good ranking functions that consider the proximity of keywords to compute relevance scores. In this paper, we study how to integrate proximity information into ranking in instant-fuzzy search while achieving efficient time and space complexities. We adapt existing solutions on proximity ranking to instant-fuzzy search. A naïve solution is computing all answers then ranking them, but it cannot meet this high-speed requirement on large data sets when there are too many answers, so there are studies of early-termination techniques to efficiently compute relevant answers. To overcome the space and time limitations of these solutions, we propose an approach that focuses on common phrases in the data and queries, assuming records with these phrases are ranked higher. We study how to index these phrases and develop an incremental-computation algorithm for efficiently segmenting a query into phrases and computing relevant answers. We conducted a thorough experimental study on real data sets to show the tradeoffs between time, space, and quality of these solutions.

AsterixDB is a new, full-function BDMS (Big Data Management System) with a feature set that distinguishes it from other platforms in today's open source Big Data ecosystem. Its features make it well-suited to applications like web data warehousing, social data storage and analysis, and other use cases related to Big Data. AsterixDB has a flexible NoSQL style data model; a query language that supports a wide range of queries; a scalable runtime; partitioned, LSM-based data storage and indexing (including B + -tree, R-tree, and text indexes); support for external as well as natively stored data; a rich set of built-in types; support for fuzzy, spatial, and temporal types and queries; a built-in notion of data feeds for ingestion of data; and transaction support akin to that of a NoSQL store. Development of AsterixDB began in 2009 and led to a mid-2013 initial open source release. This paper is the first complete description of the resulting open source AsterixDB system. Covered herein are the system's data model, its query language, and its software architecture. Also included are a summary of the current status of the project and a first glimpse into how AsterixDB performs when compared to alternative technologies, including a parallel relational DBMS, a popular NoSQL store, and a popular Hadoop-based SQL data analytics platform, for things that both technologies can do. Also included is a brief description of some initial trials that the system has undergone and the lessons learned (and plans laid) based on those early "customer" engagements.

MOTIVATION: The MEDLINE database, consisting of over 19 million publication records, is the primary source of information for biomedicine and health questions. Although the database itself has been growing rapidly, the search paradigm of MEDLINE has remained largely unchanged. RESULTS: Here, we propose a new system for exploring the entire MEDLINE collection, represented by two unique features: (i) interactive: providing instant feedback to users' query letter by letter, and (ii) fuzzy: allowing approximate search. We develop novel index structures and search algorithms to make such a search model possible. We also develop incremental-update techniques to keep the data up to date. AVAILABILITY: Interactive and fuzzy searching algorithms for exploring MEDLINE are implemented in a system called iPubMed, freely accessible over the web at http://ipubmed.ics.uci.edu/ and http://tastier.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/ipubmed.