Objectives

From the Course Objectives a key point is the objective to: critique, contrast, compare, and evaluate the efficiency, effectiveness, and utility of commercially available and research prototype systems for IS&R. We can look at the fundamental issues in this regard, involving data and files structures and their coupling with algorithms: building inverted files, performing set operations that correspond to the Boolean operators, and evaluating extended Boolean queries. In particular, for these three areas, we support the objective of being able to: select ... algorithms and data structures for IS&Rsystems.

Another objective calls for students to: effectively use ... search ... access systems - for common tasks. This depends on careful thought regarding what is shown in the videotape, experimentation with the laboratory routines, and applying an understanding of the internal representations and processing schemes.

In particular, this Unit has the following objectives, for students to be able to:

1. describe the process of online searching, including offline preparation, developing a query strategy, interactively searching, and obtaining results;

2. design and write efficient programs to build an inverted file;

3. design and write efficient programs to carry out the set operations needed for Boolean query processing;

4. design and write programs to compute MMM, Paice, and P-norm similarities between documents and extended Boolean queries;

5. give plausible arguments regarding why the extended Boolean query schemes may make retrieval more effective; and

6. apply knowledge about Boolean query processing to the design of future, improved, information retrieval systems, or the re-design (for improved efficiency and effectiveness) of current ones.