Rule-Based Exploration of Structured Data in the Browser

We present Dexter, a browser-based, domain-independent structured-data explorer for users. Dexter enables users to explore data from multiple local and Web-accessible heterogeneous data sources such as files, Web pages, APIs and databases in the form of tables. Dexter’s users can also compute tables from existing ones as well as validate the tables (base or computed) through declarative rules. Dexter enables users to perform ad hoc queries over their tables with higher expressivity than that is supported by the underlying data sources. Dexter evaluates a user’s query on the client side while evaluating sub-queries on remote sources whenever possible. Dexter also allows users to visualize and share tables, and export (e.g., in JSON, plain XML, and RuleML) tables along with their computation rules. Dexter has been tested for a variety of data sets from domains such as government and apparel manufacturing. Dexter is available online at http://dexter.stanford.edu.