Transaction Log Tables

To facilitate analysis of the field study data, a relational DBMS (Oracle) is used to store the transaction logs and to create summary tables from them.

A separate table is used for each type of command and result. Each entry contains a unique transaction key to link it with related entries in other tables. The database contains:

• A command sequence table to record all commands used in the search session. This is called commands . Its attributes are:
  • command identifier a number allocated sequentially by the logging process as each command is issued;
  • session number a number allocated sequentially to each separate session;
  • query number because a session may consist of several different queries;
  • search number because a query may consist of an initial search and several expanded searches;
  • sequence number a number stating that the command was nth in the search;
  • command number a number representing the command name, which can be found in a different table;
  • machine time for the command to be completed;
  • idle time between the last command and the current command.
• A command names table to record the names of the commands the numbers refer to. The attributes for this table are command number and command name.
• A table for each of the significant points in the search session. These are:
  • The query table to record
  • The partial match list table
  • The search table
  • The thesaurus navigation table
• A table for each type of result generated during a search session.
  • The termset table
  • The document titles table
  • The hitlist table
  • The pool of relevant documents table
• A table for user and session information.
  • The users table
  • The session table

• Detailed list of tables and table attributes
  • Command names table: cmd_names
  • Users table: users
  • Session table: sessions
  • Command table: commands
  • Query table: queries
  • Partial Match List table: matches
  • Search table: searches
  • Table of Document Titles: doctitles
  • Pool table: pools
  • Termset table: termsets
  • Thesaurus navigation table: navigates
  • Hitlist table: hitlists