Distributed Information Retrieval

Abstract

Until now, we focused strictly on the use of a single machine to provide an information retrieval service. In Chapter 7, we discussed the use of a single machine with multiple processors to improve performance. Although efficient performance is critical for user acceptance of the system, today, document collections are often scattered across many different geographical areas. Thus, the ability to process the data where they are located is arguably even more important than the ability to efficiently process them. Possible constraints prohibiting the centralization of the data include data security, their sheer volume prohibiting their physical transfer, their rate of change, political and legal constraints, as well as other proprietary motivations. For a comprehensive discussion from a data engineering perspective on the engineering of data processing systems in a distributed environment, see [Shuey et al., 1997].