Document Retrieval - Description

Description

Document retrieval systems find information to given criteria by matching text records (documents) against user queries, as opposed to expert systems that answer questions by inferring over a logical knowledge database. A document retrieval system consists of a database of documents, a classification algorithm to build a full text index, and a user interface to access the database.

A document retrieval system has two main tasks:

  1. Find relevant documents to user queries
  2. Evaluate the matching results and sort them according to relevance, using algorithms such as PageRank.

Internet search engines are classical applications of document retrieval. The vast majority of retrieval systems currently in use range from simple Boolean systems through to systems using statistical or natural language processing techniques.

Read more about this topic:  Document Retrieval

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