Web Table Extraction, Retrieval, and Augmentation

Abstract

Tables are powerful and popular tools for organizing and manipulating data. A vast number of tables can be found on the Web, which represent a valuable knowledge resource. The objective of this survey is to synthesize and present two decades of research on web tables. In particular, we organize existing literature into six main categories of information access tasks: table extraction, table interpretation, table search, question answering, knowledge base augmentation, and table augmentation. For each of these tasks, we identify and describe seminal approaches, present relevant resources, and point out interdependencies among the different tasks.