3 in 1: Meta-Search, Thesaurus, and GUI for Focused Web Information Retrieval ♣
Pavel Braslavski, Ub Ras, Anton Shishkin, Gleb Alshanski · 2004
In this paper we introduce ProThes, a system for focused Web information retrieval. ProThes combines three approaches: metasearch, advanced graphical user interface (GUI) for query specification, and thesaurusbased query techniques. ProThes attempts to employ domain-specific knowledge, which is represented by a conceptual thesaurus. Moreover, ProThes uses domain-specific results ranking heuristics. Since the domain characteristics are separated from the system core, adjusting to a specific domain is trouble free. Thesaurus allows the user to build queries both manually and in automatic mode. The paper describes the system architecture, metasearch features, thesaurus representation format, query operations, GUI and provides a number of query examples. ProThes is implemented on Java 2 Enterprise Edition platform.