Generating Query Forms and Reports for Semistructured Data: the QURSED Editor Yannis Papakonstantinou 1 , Michalis Petropoulos 1 , and Vasilis Vassalos 2 1 Computer Science and Engineering Department University of California, San Diego, USA Email: {yannis, mpetropo}@cs.ucsd.edu 2 Computer Science Department, Athens University of Economics and Business Athens, Greece Email: vassalos@aueb.gr Abstract. The wide adoption of semistructured XML databases requires the ex- istence of systems for the generation and execution of web-based interactive da- tabase query forms and reports. Such systems are most effective when they al- low the construction of the query forms and reports without programming, via the use of intuitive graphical tools. We describe the architecture of the QURSED system for the declarative specification and automatic generation of web-based query forms and reports (QFRs) for semistructured XML data. We then focus on the QURSED Editor, a powerful GUI tool for the generation of the declarative specifications of QFRs. We describe the Editor's architecture and present the techniques and heuristics the Editor employs for translating vis- ual designer input into meaningful specifications of query forms and reports. An on-line demonstration of the system is available at http://www.db.ucsd.edu/qursed 1. Introduction XML is a simple and powerful data exchange and representation language, largely due to its self-describing nature. Its advantages are especially strong in the case of semistructured data, i.e., data whose structure is not rigid and is characterized by nesting, optional fields, and high variability of the structure. An example is a catalog for complicated products such as sensors: they are often nested into manufacturer categories and each product of a sensor manufacturer comes with its own variations. For example, some sensors are rectangular and have height and width, and others are cylindrical and have diameter and barrel style. Some sensors have one or more protec- tion ratings, while others have none. The relational data model is cumbersome in modeling such semistructured data because of its rigid tabular structure. The database community perceived the relational model’s limitations early on and responded with labeled graph data models [1] that evolved into XML-based data models [10]. XML query languages (with most notable the emerging XQuery stan- dard [6]), XML databases [23] and mediators [12][17] have been designed and devel- oped. They materialize the in-principle advantages of XML in representing and que-