Retrieving relevant portions from structured digital documents

Abstract

Retrieving relevant portions from structured documents consisting of logical components has been a challenging task in both the database and the information retrieval world, since an answer related to a query may be split across multiple components. In this paper, we propose a query mechanism that applies database style query evaluation in response to IR style keyword-based queries for retrieving relevant answers from a logically structured document. We first define an appropriate semantics of keywords-based queries and then propose an algebra that is capable of computing every relevant portion of a document, which can be considered answer to a set of arbitrary keywords. The ordering and structural relationship among the components are preserved in the answer. We also introduce several practically useful filters that saves users from having to deal with an overwhelming number of answers. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.