Ask for Information Retrieval : Part IIo Results of a Desisn Stud

(Chosen by Go Salton from current issues of journals in the retrieval area) o Unifying Model of Physical Databases D° S. Batory and Co C° Gotlieb University of Toronto CANADA A unifying model for the study of database performance is proposed° Applications of the model are shown to relate and extend important work concerning batched searching, transposed files, index selection~ dynamic hashbased files, generalized access path structures, differential files, network databases, and multifile query processing. (ACM Transactions on Database Systems, Vol° 7, No° 4, December 1982, pp. 509539.) . Ask for Information Retrieval: Part IIo Results of a Desisn Stud l N. J. Belkin and H. M. Brooks Centre for Information Science The City University London, ENGLAND R. N. Oddy Computer Centre The University of Aston Birmingham, ENGLAND In 'ASK for Information Retrieval: Part I,' we discussed the theory and background to a design study for an information retrieval (IR) system based on the attempt to represent the anomalous states of knowledge (ASKs) underlying information needs. In Part II, we report the methods and results of the design study, and our conclusions. (Journal of Documentation, Vol. 38, No. 3, September 1982, pp. 145-64.) . Processi__ng Truncated Terms in Document Retrieval Systems Paul Bratley and Yaacov Choueka Departement d'informatique et de recherche operationnelle, Universite de Montreal, C.P. 6128 Succursale "A". Montreal P.Qo, CANADA H3C 3J7 In a typical inverted-file full-text docuraent retrieval system, the user submits queries consisting of strings of characters combined by various operators° The strings are looked up in a text-dictionary which lists, for each string, all the places in the database at which it occurs. It is desirable to allow the user to include in his query truncated terms such as X*, *X~ *X*, or X'Y, where X and Y are specified strings and * is a variable-length-don't-care character~ that is, * represents an arbitrary, possibly empty, string° Processing these terms involves finding the set of all words in the dictionary