The World Wide Web as a Database

                Alberto Mendelzon

           Department of Computer Science
              University of Toronto

We explore a simple relational model of the Web intended to
support declarative queries. We present a query language,
WebSQL, that helps automate web navigation and search, and
discuss its use as a Java application development tool. We then
describe the beginnings of a theory of query computability
and complexity motivated by this language. Finally, we sketch
the design of a new query language,  WebOQL, that takes advantage
of a richer Web model.


Alberto Mendelzon, Professor of Computer Science, University of Toronto,
has been with the department since 1980. He received his MA, MSE, 
and PhD degrees from Princeton University. He has been a visiting
scientist at the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies, AT&T Bell
Laboratories, NTT Basic Research Labs, and the IASI in Rome.
He has chaired or cochaired the Program Committees of the 
ACM Principles of Database Systems Symposium (1991), International
Conference on Very Large Databases (1992), and the International
Symposium on Deductive and Object-Oriented Databses (1995), as well
as General Chair of the ACM Principles of Database Symposium
for 1997 and 1998. He is also the current chair of the NSERC
Grant Selection Committee in Computing and Information Science.
He is on the Editorial board of the Journal of Digital Libraries.