A Survey and Taxonomy of Intent-Based Code Search

In this paper, the authors introduce the novel concept of intent-based code search that categorizes code search goals into a hierarchy. They will explore state-of-the-art techniques in source code search covering various tools, techniques, and algorithms related to source code search. They will survey the code search field through the core use cases of code search such as code reusability, code understanding, and code repair. They propose a user intent-based taxonomy based on the code search goals. The code search goal taxonomy is derived based on deep analysis of literature survey of code search, and the taxonomy is validated based on their exclusive developer survey conducted as part of this paper. The code search goal taxonomy is based on logical categorization of code search goals and shared characteristics (query type, expected response, and such) for each of the categories in the taxonomy. The paper also details the latest trends and surveys the code search tools and the implications on tool design.

On the Expressivity of ASK Queries in SPARQL

As a major query type in SPARQL, ASK queries are boolean queries and have found applications in several domains such as semantic SPARQL optimization. This paper is a first systematic study of the relative expressive power of various fragments of ASK queries in SPARQL. Among many new results, a surprising one is that the operator UNION is redundant for ASK queries. The results in this paper as a whole paint a rich picture for the expressivity of fragments of ASK queries with the four basic operators of SPARQL 1.0 possibly together with a negation. The work in this paper provides a guideline for future SPARQL query optimization and implementation.

Multi-Point Semantic Representation for Intent Classification

Detecting user intents from utterances is the basis of natural language understanding (NLU) task. To understand the meaning of utterances, some work focuses on fully representing utterances via semantic parsing in which annotation cost is labor-intentsive. While some researchers simply view this as intent classification or frequently asked questions (FAQs) retrieval, they do not leverage the shared utterances among different intents. We propose a simple and novel multi-point semantic representation framework with relatively low annotation cost to leverage the fine-grained factor information, decomposing queries into four factors, i.e., topic, predicate, object/condition, query type. Besides, we propose a compositional intent bi-attention model under multi-task learning with three kinds of attention mechanisms among queries, labels and factors, which jointly combines coarse-grained intent and fine-grained factor information. Extensive experiments show that our framework and model significantly outperform several state-of-the-art approaches with an improvement of 1.35%-2.47% in terms of accuracy.

The influence of snippet length on user behavior in mobile web search

Purpose Web search is more and more moving into mobile contexts. However, screen size of mobile devices is limited and search engine result pages face a trade-off between offering informative snippets and optimal use of space. One factor clearly influencing this trade-off is snippet length. The purpose of this paper is to find out what snippet size to use in mobile web search. Design/methodology/approach For this purpose, an eye-tracking experiment was conducted showing participants search interfaces with snippets of one, three or five lines on a mobile device to analyze 17 dependent variables. In total, 31 participants took part in the study. Each of the participants solved informational and navigational tasks. Findings Results indicate a strong influence of page fold on scrolling behavior and attention distribution across search results. Regardless of query type, short snippets seem to provide too little information about the result, so that search performance and subjective measures are negatively affected. Long snippets of five lines lead to better performance than medium snippets for navigational queries, but to worse performance for informational queries. Originality/value Although space in mobile search is limited, this study shows that longer snippets improve usability and user experience. It further emphasizes that page fold plays a stronger role in mobile than in desktop search for attention distribution.

An Efficient Optimization Approach for Top-k Queries on Uncertain Data

Uncertain data is inherent in various important applications and Top-[Formula: see text] query on uncertain data is an important query type for many applications. To tackle the performance issue of evaluating Top-[Formula: see text] query on uncertain data, an efficient optimization approach was proposed in this paper. This method can anticipate the tuples most likely to become Top-[Formula: see text] result based on dominant relationship analysis, greatly reducing the amount of data in query processing. When the database is updated, this method could determine whether the change affects the current query result, and help us to avoid unnecessary re-query. The experimental results prove the feasibility and effectiveness of this method.

A Design Preference Elicitation Query as an Optimization Process

We seek to elicit individual design preferences through human-computer interaction. During an iteration of the interactive session, the computer queries the subject by presenting a set of designs from which the subject must make a choice. The computer uses this choice feedback and creates the next set of designs using knowledge accumulated from previous choices. Under the hypothesis that human responses are deterministic, we discuss how query schemes in the elicitation task can be viewed mathematically as learning or optimization algorithms. Two query schemes are defined. Query type 1 considers the subject’s binary choices as definite preferences, i.e., only preferred designs are chosen, while others are skipped; query type 2 treats choices as comparisons among a set, i.e., preferred designs are chosen relative to those in the current set but may be dropped in future iterations. We show that query type 1 can be considered as an active learning problem, while type 2 as a “black-box” optimization problem. This paper concentrates on query type 2. Two algorithms based on support vector machine and efficient global optimization search are presented and discussed. Early user tests for vehicle exterior styling preference elicitation are also presented.