AUTHOR(S): Jones, S
TITLE: A thesaurus data model for an intelligent retrieval system.
SOURCE: J. Inf. Sci. Princ. Pract. (Netherlands), vol.19, no.3, 1993, 167-78
DESCRIPTORS: Entity-relationship modelling; information retrieval systems; relational databases; thesauri.
HEADINGS: Database design; semantic net; relational database; intelligent information retrieval system; machine-readable; query.
CLASS: C6160D C7240
ABSTRACT: "This paper demonstrates the application of conventional database design techniques to thesaurus representation. The thesaurus is considered as a printed document, as a semantic net, and as a relational database to be used in conjunction with an intelligent information retrieval system. Some issues raised by analysis of two standard thesauri include: the prevalence of compound terms and the representation of term structure; thesaurus redundancy and the extent to which it can be eliminated in machine-readable versions; the difficulty of exploiting thesaurus knowledge originally designed for human rather than automatic interpretation; deriving 'strength of association' measures between terms in a thesaurus considered as a semantic net; facet representation and the need for variations in the data model to cater for structural differences between thesauri. A complete schema of database tables is presented, with an outline suggestion for using the stored information when matching one or more thesaurus terms with a user's query."