Query modification system for information retrieval

• US 20030014398A1
• Filed: 02/19/2002
• Published: 01/16/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 06/29/2001
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Nishikawa, Tetsuo, Ohta, Yoshihiro, Ihara, Sigeo
• Application Number:
  US10/076,400
• Publication Number:
  US 20030014398A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9532 Query formulation

Abstract

Information demanded by a user can be provided more accurately and intelligibly. When query information is inputted to a text-format file name input form, a natural language input form, a UI number input form, a URL input form, a readout form for registered query conceptions or the like on a screen for generation of a query conception, a query conception assembled from the query information is represented on a screen as a query vector containing a plurality of keywords and weights of the respective keywords. A user can confirm the query conception by viewing the query vector and modify the query conception if necessary.

Claims

1. An information retrieval system for retrieving information from a database, said information retrieval system comprising:

means for representing an input screen for inputting query information; and

query vector representing means for representing a query conception assembled from the inputted query information as a query vector which contains a plurality of keywords and weights of the respective keywords.

2. The information retrieval system according to claim 1,

wherein the query information can be inputted to the input screen with any one of a name of a file which saves information in a text format, a sentence and a phrase in a natural language, an ID number of a public database, a URL, identification information of query conceptions already registered, and a combination of any of the foregoing, and

said query vector representing means represents the query vector generated by integrating the query information which is inputted to the input screen.

3. The information retrieval system according to claim 1, further comprising:

means for editing a query vector represented on said query vector representing means.

4. The information retrieval system according to claim 3,

wherein said means for editing a query vector includes any one of:

means for restricting keywords represented on said query vector representing means to keywords having at least a designated weight; and

means for restricting keywords represented on said query vector representing means to keywords having high weights within a designated ranking.

5. The information retrieval system according to claim 3,

wherein said means for editing a query vector includes means for individually modifying weights of keywords represented on said query vector representing means.

6. The information retrieval system according to claim 1, further comprising:

means for representing a table in which retrieved documents are disposed in a descending order of scores along one axis, a plurality of keywords that are elements of a query vector are disposed along another axis, and scores of the keywords in the respective documents are disposed on intersection points of the respective documents and the keywords.

7. The information retrieval system according to claim 1, further comprising:

means for extracting terms co-occurring with the keywords in the query vector from documents obtained as retrieval results and representing a list of the terms; and

means for adding a term designated among the terms on the list to the query information.

8. The information retrieval system according to claim 1, further comprising:

retrieval result representing means for representing a list of retrieved documents in a descending order of score rankings; and

means for adding a document designated among the documents represented on said retrieval result representing means to the query information.

9. The information retrieval system according to claim 7, further comprising:

means for re-assembling a query conception based on the modified query information and representing the re-assembled query conception as a query vector containing a plurality of keywords and weights of the respective keywords.

13. A program for allowing a computer to realize the information retrieval system according to claim 1.

10. A server comprising:

means for generating a query vector containing a plurality of keywords and weights of the respective keywords out of query information transmitted from a client;

means for transmitting a screen representing the query vector to the client;

means for transmitting the query vector to a database for information retrieval; and

means for transmitting a screen representing retrieval results from the database to the client.

11. The server according to claim 10, further comprising:

means for extracting terms co-occurring with keywords in the query vector from documents obtained as the retrieval results;

means for transmitting a screen which represents a list of the extracted terms; and

means for re-assembling a query vector by adding a term to the query information, said term being designated by the client on the screen representing the list.

12. The server according to claim 10, further comprising:

means for transmitting a retrieval result display screen representing a list of documents retrieved from the database in a descending order of score rankings; and

means for re-assembling a query vector by adding a document to the query information, said document being designated by the client among the documents represented on the retrieval result display screen.