Li (Lily) Chen

Department of Computer Science Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) 100 Institute Road Worcester, MA 01609 Office: FL 319 Phone: +1-508-831-5857 (office) Fax: +1-508-831-5776 E-Mail: lichen@cs.wpi.edu

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts. My research focuses on the area of Web database and XML. My specific dissertation topic is Semantic Caching for XML Queries by exploring the query containment and rewriting techniques for XML queries. I am also interested in XML query optimization, web view maintenance, data model mappings, E-Commerce applications, Web data integration, Web services, multi-dimensional data indexing. My supervisor is Professor Elke Rundensteiner.

Curriculum Vitae:

• Long Version  (.pdf)  (.txt)
• Short Version  (.doc)  (.txt)

Teaching:

• CS3431 B-Term 2002
• CS3431 D-Term 2003

Honors:

• IBM Cooperative Fellowship, 1998 - 2001.

• Ericsson's Certification of Excellency in Performance, 1996.

• Honor Title of "Excellent Student", Beijing University of Posts and Telecom, China, 1996.

• Merit Scholarship, Beijing University of Posts and Telecom. every semester, 1990 - 1996.

• Second Prize in the Provincial Olympic Physics Contest for High School Students, 1989.

Research Experience:   (1997 - 2003)   Research Assistant at WPI     (with IBM Fellowship 1998 - 2001)

• XML Query Cache Researched and developed a semantic caching system for XML queries based on the query containment and rewriting techniques to achieve the goal of improving the performance of XML query evaluation in a distributed environment. Designed, implemented, tested and maintained this caching system named "ACE-XQ" (A CachE-aware XQuery answering system). Developed query normalization rules and minimization techniques. First proposed and implemented the XQuery containment checking and rewriting framework, which handles containment beyond XPath (on which the extensive research has been focused). Proposed and implemented a fine-grained replacement strategy which can better adapt to the user access pattern. Conducted experimental studies to illustrate the performance gains over the alternative replacement policies. Demonstrated the system at SIGMOD'02. Published one journal paper and two conference papers.


• Web Information Integration and Its Maintenance. Conducted research and development of a web view maintenance system called "ARGOS" for efficiently maintaining the integrated web information. Designed a novel index structure and developed a maintenance strategy that can enhance the self-maintainability and hence the view refreshing efficiency. Published two conference papers to demonstrate the findings.


• OODB Schema Evolution and Its Application in Web Site Restructuring Management. Designed and implemented a web site restructuring services called "ReWEB" over "SERF" (Schema Evolution through an extensible, Re-usable and flexible Framework). Developed an OODB-XML model mapping strategy. Utilized SERF to provide the object-oriented schema and view evolution support for managing the restructuring of web sites such as the personalized catalogs for E-Commerce. Published one journal paper and four conference papers. Demonstrated the system at SIGMOD'99 and SIGMOD'00.


• Multi-dimensional Data Indexing. Investigated a bulk-insertion strategy called "STLT" for dynamically maintaining the R-tree index in a spatial database system such as GIS (Geographic Information System). Designed and implemented this technique and conducted experimental studies to demonstrate the improved database availability achieved by it. Published one journal paper and two conference papers.

   1998 - 2000     Summer Intern     IBM Toronto Lab Toronto, Canada

• Developer of the IBM E-Commerce Solution - Websphere Commerce Suite (WCS V5). Contributed in the development of the back-end integration of WCS V5. Implemented the view composition template for creating XML messages, and the functions for parsing messages and routing them to different transports. Investigated feasible solutions for generating web pages from the XML response messages. Developed a prototype that adopts the approach of exporting DataBeans to XML documents and then transforming XML into HTML pages using XSLT. This approach for automatic page generation helps to relieve programmers from the burden of coding the composition logic using JSP for each new bean type and hence provides a more scalable solution. Published one paper at International Symposium on Electronic Commerce (ISEC'01). Researched the E-Commerce Intelligence for measuring, analyzing and reporting the effectiveness of online stores.




• Developer of the IBM XML Query Engine Prototype. Conducted research and development of a flexible execution engine translating the surface query language into intermediate languages appropriate for the XML storage formats in parsed DOM, relational tables, LDAP directory objects, etc.




• Tester of the IBM Net.Commerce. Wrote scripts for generating transaction data. Revised the E-R design for Net.Data. Populated the sample data into DB2 to build virtual stores. Evaluated the system capacity and performance. Reviewed the TCP-W proposal.

   1994 - 1996     Software Engineer     Ericsson Inc. Beijing, China

• Chief Developer of TEPOS (TEst Progress suppOrt System). Designed and implemented the kernel database module for TEPOS, a tool for progress reporting during testing. Led the requirement analysis and the design of user interface for test case registration, metrics data collection and feedback retrieval. Wrote an SGML parser for parsing test documents and extracting useful information to be inserted into a database. Created the TEPOS database schema and indexes in Sybase. Implemented triggers for maintaining database integrity and stored procedures for transaction management. Defined the user access rights for sensitive data and set view limitations to people at different levels in the organization. Exploited the caching mechanism for performance tuning. Approximately 2000 Ericsson users today use TEPOS, the quality of which is appraised as excellent.

   Submissions:

• Chen, L. and Rundensteiner, E. A.
  "Variable-based Containment Mapping for XQuery",
  Submitted to EDBT 2004 (.pdf)

• Chen, L., Wang, S. and Rundensteiner, E. A.
  "Exploiting A Lattice for Indexing Semantic Queries"
  In preparation (.ps)

   Journal Papers:

• Chen, L., Wang, S. and Rundensteiner, E. A.
  "Evaluation of Replacement Strategies for XML Query Cache"
  Data and Knowledge Engineering Journal (DKE), 2003, to appear (.pdf)

• Chen, L., Choubey, R. and Rundensteiner, E. A.
  "Merging R-Trees: Efficient Strategies for Local Bulk Insertion",
  GeoInformatica Journal, 2002, Volume 6, Issue 1, pp. 7-34 (.ps)

• Chen, L., Claypool, K. T. and Rundensteiner, E. A.
  "SERFing the Web: The Re-Web Approach for Web Re-Structuring"
  WWW Journal - Special Issue on "Internet Data Management", 2000, Volume 3 Issue 2, pp. 95-109 (zipped .ps)

   Conference Papers:

• Chen, L., Wang, S. and Rundensteiner, E. A.
  "A Fine-Grained Replacement Strategy for XML Query Cache"
  ACM Fourth International Workshop on Web Information and Data Management (WIDM'02), McLean, Virginia, November 2002, pp 76--83 (.pdf)

• Chen, L. and Rundensteiner, E. A.
  "ACE-XQ: A CachE-aware XQuery Answering System",
  ACM SIGMOD Associated Workshop on the Web and Databases (WebDB'02), Madison, Wisconsin, June 2002, pp 31--36. (.ps)

• Chen, L., Rundensteiner, E. A. and Wang, Song.
  "XCache - A Semantic Caching System for XML Queries"
  ACM SIGMOD'02, Software System Demonstration Paper, Madison, Wisconsin, June 2002, pp 618. (.ps)

• Chen, L., Rundensteiner, E. A., Ally, A., Chen, R. and Kou, W.
  "Active Page Generation via Customizing XML for Data Beans in E-Commerce Applications"
  2nd International Symposium on Electronic Commerce (ISEC 2001), Hong Kong, April 2001, pp 79--97 (.ps)

• Su, H., Kramer, D., Chen L., Claypool, K. and Rundensteiner, E. A.
  "XEM: Managing the evolution of XML Documents"
  Eleventh International Workshop on Research Issues in Data Engineering (RIDE 2001), Heidelberg, Germany, April 2001, pp 103--110 (.pdf)

• Quan, L. P., Chen, L. and Rundensteiner, E. A.
  "Argos: Efficient Refresh in an XQL-Based Web Caching System"
  ACM SIGMOD Associated Workshop on the Web and Databases (WebDB 2000), Dallas, Texas, May 2000, pp 23--28 (.ps)

• Claypool, K. T., Chen, L. and Rundensteiner, E. A.
  "Personal Views for Web Catalogs"
  IEEE DE Bulletin, March 2000, Special Issue: Database Technology for E-Commerce, pp 10--16 (.pdf)

• Rundensteiner, E. A., Claypool, K. T., Chen, L., Su, H. and Oenoki, K.
  "SERFing the Web: Web-Site Management Made Easy"
  SIGMOD 2000, Software system demonstration paper, Dallas, Texas, May 2000, pp 585 (.ps)

• Choubey, R., Chen, L. and Rundensteiner, E. A.
  "GBI: A Generalized R-Tree Bulk-Insertion Strategy",
  International Symposium on Spatial Databases (SSD'99), Hong Kong, July 1999, pp 91--108 (.pdf)

• Chen, L. and Rundensteiner, E. A.
  "Aggregation Path Index for Incremental Web View Maintenance"
  The Second International Workshop on Advanced Issues of E-Commerce and Web-based Information Systems (WECWIS 2000), San Jose, California, June 2000, pp 231--238 (.pdf)

• Rundensteiner, E. A., Claypool, K. T., Li, M., Chen, L., Zhang, X., Natarajan, C., Jing, J. and DeLima, S.
  "SERF: ODMG-Based Generic Re-structuring Facility"
  SIGMOD'99, Software system demonstration paper, Philadelphia, Pennsyvania, May 1999, pp 568--570 (.ps)

• Claypool, K. T., Rundensteiner, E. A. and Chen, L.
  "Re-WEB: Re-Usable Templates for Web View Generation and Restructuring",
  Poster, IBM Center for Advanced Studies Conference (CASCON'98), Toronto, Canada, November 1998

• Claypool, K. T., Rundensteiner, E. A., Chen, L. and Kothari, B.
  "Re-usable ODMG-based Templates for Web View Generation and Restructuring",
  CIKM'98 Workshop on Web Information and Data Management (WIDM'98), Washington, D.C., November 1998, pp 53--56 (.ps)

• Chen, L., Choubey, R. and Rundensteiner, E. A.
  "STLT: Bulk Insertion into R-trees",
  Poster paper in the 6th ACM Workshop Geographic Information Systems (ACM-GIS'98), Washington D.C., November 1998, pp 161--162 (.ps)

• Chen, L and Ai, B.
  "An Engineering View of ODP in Telecomm Information Networking Architecture",
  International Conference on Information Infrastructures, Beijing, China, April 1996, pp 334--341.

• Member of ACM (1999 - present), IEEE (2001 - present)
• External Referee: for the Proceedings of Symposium on Large Spatial Databases, SSD 1999 and for CASCON 2000.
• Reviewer for the book Early Adopter for XQuery published by Wrox Press, also reviewed the research papers submitted to SIGMOD 1998, VLDB 1999, CIKM 1999, VLDB 2000, SSD 2001, VLDB 2002, VLDBJ 2002, SIGMOD 2003, etc.
• Attendant of SIGMOD 2000, SIGMOD 1999, VLDB 1998, CASCON 2000, CASCON 1998, ISEC 2001, ISEC 2000, WEBDB 2000, CIKM 1998, GIS 1998, SSD 1999.
• System Demonstration Presenter at SIGMOD 2002, 2000 and 1999, CASCON 2000 and 1998. Paper Presenter at WEBDB 2002, ISEC 2001, WEBDB 2000, SSD 1999, GIS 1998 and ICII 1996.
• Metor: supervised four graduate students in their master theses and six undergraduate students in their Major Qualifying Projects.

• for Research
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DBLP BibTex Site
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W3C XML Query Working Group
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• for Personal Interests
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