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ZNG  September 2002

ZNG September 2002

Subject:

Re: Expressing Term Structure

From:

Robert Sanderson <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Z39.50 Next-Generation Initiative

Date:

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 03:59:43 +0100

Content-Type:

TEXT/PLAIN

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

TEXT/PLAIN (108 lines)

I agree with Mike, I believe that his solution solves all of the current
problems on the table while maintaining a clean mapping to the attribute
architecture. (Along with anchoring characters and default unanchored
searches)

Obviously there are still further required operators for numeric
comparison and geographical comparison (within, greater than, fully
enclosed by, overlaps and so forth) But this makes for a tidy set of
string based operators.

I do not agree with Alan -- at no time has CQL/XCQL been designed to make
it -easy to remember- for users, the only restriction was that it should
be -possible- to enter directly, which it still certainly is with the
expanded operator set. (See discussion about naming of resultsets for
an aide memoire on this topic)

Alan's examples do not follow the current outline for CQL of
(indexset.index op "term" boolean indexset.index op "term") and I do not
see any reason to change this when Mike's proposal makes for a cleaner
mapping with less ambiguity.

Rob

On Thu, 26 Sep 2002, Alan Kent wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 10:54:41AM -0400, Ray Denenberg wrote:
> > =* all of these words
> > =? any of these words
> > =. adjacent words
> > =~ relevant words
> > == exact string match
> > gives us a much cleaner mapping to AA, and means we don't need separate
> > word and string indexes.
> >
> > Anyone else support this?
>
> I can understand the niceness in mapping to AA, but I am wondering how
> easy it will be for users to remember what all the symbols mean.
>
> I think making the least typing do the most commonly expected thing is
> good. I don't think the goal should be google-like, only because its
> not going to be completely google-like anyway with AND, OR, NOT, fields,
> etc. So let applications turn google-like queries into CQL if they want to.
>
> So based on my personal subjective opinion of what most people would
> do most of the time (making it a little harder to do less common things),
> my favorite mix this morning is:
>
> - if you want all words in field, use AND-ed conditions
> - if you want any words in field, use OR-ed conditions
> - several words in a row means adjaceny, unanchored
> - use a symbol such as '|' to anchor at left or right (not suggesting
> what symbol to use, just that a symbol is reasonable)
>
> Note: for AND, I am not sure of operator precedence. In CCL
>
> title=john and smith
>
> needs to be entered as
>
> title=(john and smith)
>
> as by default it means
>
> (title=john) and (smith)
>
> We could change this maybe as I think the former is more likely what
> people want to do. Does make parsing a little harder though.
>
> For string search, I think a different field name can be used. I don't
> think it would be common that a field would be both word indexed and
> string indexed. So if the field is string, use that attribute by default.
>
> Also note, for '|' (or whatever character) being an anchor, I don't mean
> this should be in the Z39.50 pattern operator. I think the CQL parser
> should treat these as modifications to the attribute list
>
> title="dog" any where in field
> title="|dog" means anchored at beginning - put the firstWordsInField
> attribute on, don't send the '|' through to the server,
> just 'dog'.
> title="|dog*" means firstWordsInField and send 'dog*' through with
> the new masking attribute on too.
>
> Relevance? Hmmm. Not sure what syntax to suggest.
>
> For proximity, if we wanted to avoid attributes, "john smith" could always
> be sent through using the PROX operator (not an attribute list). Or it
> could be up to a CQL implementation to choose whether to go for an
> attribute list (eg: it could try to optimize 'title=john and smith' into
> 'allWordsInField: john smith' - the CQL syntax does not have to be
> exactly the same as the attribute lists etc).
>
> I guess its the good old problem of do you try and do something fully
> functional with consistent syntax for all different things possible,
> or do you make common things easy and less common things harder.
>
> Alan
>

--
      ,'/:. Rob Sanderson ([log in to unmask])
    ,'-/::::. http://www.o-r-g.org/~azaroth/
  ,'--/::(@)::. Special Collections and Archives, extension 3142
,'---/::::::::::. Twin Cathedrals: telnet: liverpool.o-r-g.org 7777
____/:::::::::::::. WWW: http://liverpool.o-r-g.org:8000/
I L L U M I N A T I

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