Complex pattern matching in complex structures: The XSeq approach

There is much current interest in applications of complex event processing over data streams and of complex pattern matching over stored sequences. While some applications use streams of flat records, XML and various semi-structured information formats are preferred by many others-in particular, applications that deal with domain science, social networks, RSS feeds, and finance. XSeq and its system improve complex pattern matching technology significantly, both in terms of expressive power and efficient implementation. XSeq achieves higher expressiveness through an extension of XPath based on Kleene-* pattern constructs, and achieves very efficient execution, on both stored and streaming data, using Visibly Pushdown Automata (VPA). In our demo, we will (i) show examples of XSeq in different application domains, (ii) explain its compilation/query optimization techniques and show the speed-ups they deliver, and (iii) demonstrate how powerful and efficient application-specific languages were implemented by superimposing simple `skins´ on XSeq and its system.