Abstract
An on-line distributed environment, which was implemented in the context of the VENIVA project for historical libraries and archives is presented here. Emphasis is given in the presentation of the powerful search capabilities provided to the end-users, which are typical for the end-users (either researchers or ordinary people) of any Digital Library environment.
The information managed resides in a number of different relational databases in one or more institutions (i.e. Libraries and Historical Archives). The end-user of the system uses a WWW client to pose traditional boolean queries, similarity queries or complex queries containing both boolean and similarity terms on the contents of the databases. In the case of similarity queries, the end-user can also select the evaluation formula used to rank the objects that the system returns as the answer to his query. This gives a flexibility to experiment with alternative retrieval models without starting the implementation from scratch. A Graphical Query Editor is used in order to construct the queries.
The innovative aspect of this work is that the similarity queries are translated by an appropriate component of the server into a series of traditional SQL queries, so that there is no need to have separate systems to support the various services offered. Only a standard relational DBMS (Database Management System) is used in the core of the system. The software layer that has been implemented on top gives all the additional flexibility. The implementation is based on a sound and flexible mathematical retrieval model.
Support for this work was provided by the VENIVA (VENetIan Virtual Archive) ESPRIT project (EP No 20638)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
N. Moumoutzis: “The Design of a System Supporting the Development of Interactive Geographical Applications”, MEng Thesis, Department of Electronic and omputer Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Chania, 1998.
G. Anestis:“Design and Implementation of a Boolean and Similarity Retrieval System on top of Relational Database Management Systems”, Diploma Thesis, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Chania, 1997.
K. Beard, V. Sharma: “Multidimensional ranking for data in digital spatial libraries”, International Journal on Digital Libraries, vol. 1, number 2, pp 153–160, September 1997.
S. DeFacio, A. Daoud, L. A. Smith, J. Srinivasan: “Integrating IR and RDBMS Using Cooperative Indexing” In Proceedings of the 18th ACM SIGIR International Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, 1995, pp 84–92.
S. Dessloch, N. Mattos: “Integrating SQL Databases with Content-specific Search Engines”,Proceedings of the 23rd VLDB Conference Athens, Greece, 1997, pp 528–537.
R. Fagin: “Combining Fuzzy Information from Multiple Systems”, Proceedings of the 15th Symposium on Principles of Database Systems, Montreal, Canada, June 1996, pp 216–226.
D. A. Grossman, O. Frieder, D. O. Holmes, D. C. Roberts: “Integrating Structured Data and Text: A Relational Approach”, Journal of the American Society of Information Science, vol. 48, no. 2, February 1997.
L. Gravano, H. Garcia-Molina: “Merging Ranks from Heterogeneous Internet Sources”, Proceedings of the 23rd VLDB Conference Athens, Greece, 1997, pp 196–205.
L. Haas, D. Kossmann, E. Wimmers, J. Yang: “Optimizing Queries across Diverse Data Sources”, Proceedings of the 23rd VLDB Conference Athens, Greece, 1997, pp 276–285.
J. Hammer, M. Breunig, H. Garcia-Molina, S. Nestorov, V. Vassalos, R. Yerneni: “Templatebased wrappers in the TSIMMIS system”, In Proceedings of the 1997 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, pp 532–535.
G. Hjaltason., H. Samet: “Ranking in Spatial Databases”, Proceedings of 4th Symposium on Advances in Spatial Databases (SSD’ 95), Lecture Notes in Computer Science No. 951, Springer-Verlag, 1995, 83–95.
Ad Hoc Commission on Descriptive Standards, “ISAD(G): General International StandardArchival Description”
Working Group on the General International Standard Bibliographic Description set by IFLA, “International Standard Bibliographic Description”, 1977
H. V. Jagadish, A. O. Mendelzon, T. Milo: “Similarity-Based Queries”, in proceedings of the 14th Symposium on Principles of Database Systems, San Jose CA, USA, 1995, pp 36–45.
Joon Ho Lee, “Properties of Extended Boolean Models in Information Retrieval”, In Proceedings of the 17th ACM SIGIR International Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, 1994, 182–190.
R. Kruse, J. Gebhardt, F. Klawonn: “Foundations of Fuzzy Systems”, John Wiley & Sons Ltd.,ISBN 0-471-94243-X, 1994
C. Lynch, M. Stonebraker: “Extending User-Defined Indexing with Applications to TextualDatabases”, Proceedings of the 14th VLDB Conference Los Angeles CA, USA, 1988, pp 306–317.
Avram, Henriette D. The MARC pilot project: final report on a project sponsored by the Council on Library Resources, Inc. Washington: Library of Congress, 1968.
M. Persin: “Document Filtering for Fast Ranking”, In Proceedings of the 17th ACM SIGIR International Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, 1994, pp 339–348.
G. Schmidt, T. Ströhlein: “Relations and Graphs”, Springer-Verlag, ISBN 3-540-56254-0,1993.
G. Shalton: “The use of Extended Boolean Logic in Information Retrieval”, In Proceedings of the 1984 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, pp 277–285.
G. Shalton: “Automatic Text Processing”, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1989
V. Vassalos, Y. Papakonstantinou: “Describing and Using Query Capabilities of Heterogeneous Sources”, Proceedings of the 23rd VLDB Conference Athens, Greece, 1997, pp256–265.
W. Moen, M. Tucker, “A Guide to Global Z39.50”
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Tsinaraki, C., Anestis, G., Moumoutzis, N., Christodoulakis, S. (1998). Implementing Powerful Retrieval Capabilities in a Distributed Environment for Libraries and Archives. In: Nikolaou, C., Stephanidis, C. (eds) Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries. ECDL 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1513. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-49653-X_47
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-49653-X_47
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-65101-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49653-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive