TREC and Tipster Experiments with Inquery

Abstract INQUERY is a probabilistic information retrieval system based upon a Bayesian inference network model. This paper describes recent improvements to the system as a result of participation in the TIPSTER project and the TREC-2 conference. Improvements include transforming forms-based specifications of information needs into complex structured queries, automatic query expansion, automatic recognition of features in documents, relevance feedback, and simulated document routing. Experiments with one- and two-gigabyte document collections are also described.