Cobra: a new approach to IR system design
Tim Mills, Ken Moody, Kerry Rodden · 1997
This paper describes Cobra, an object-oriented system for building information retrieval applications. By founding an architecture for IR systems on a model for document content, we believe that the design process will benefit in the same way that database design is aided by data modelling. An object-oriented database has been extended with specific support for information retrieval data structures. Together with an application framework, this allows rapid construction of advanced IR systems. A major goal has been to ensure that information about how a query proceeded can be delivered to the user interface to ensure that the user can build up an adequate model of the system's behaviour. We have created a Java interface to Cobra which actively supports query reformulation. This has been used to provide access to a Web-based collection of historical records. The whole system is implemented and working, and early experiments are encouraging. 1 Introduction Recent years have seen the emer...