DIALOG Engine (was: RE: Internal Revenus Service/AltaVista)

[Bob Duncan]

At 05:24 PM 4/22/97, Nick at Verity Inc. wrote:
>
>At 12:54 PM 4/22/97 -0700, Laura B. Cohen wrote:
>
>>I have to disagree here. Sometimes the *better* and more intelligent
>>software cannot recognize phrases, for example. Just look at the
>>case of DIALOG, which is an extremely powerful and accurate search
>>engine (which of course does not relevancy rate its results).
>
>What engine is Dialog using?  As far as I know, it is not very accurate in
>comparison with state-of-the-art search.  There aren't any high-accuracy
>engines that don't do some sort of relevancy ranking.  I believe Dialog is
>still using something written years ago.  (If they're using Verity, just
>give me a moment to fetch my hara-kiri sword.)

After writing a paper (for my MLS) comparing DIALOG's relevancy
ranking and standard search interfaces, it's no surprise to me
that many folks still seem to be unaware that DIALOG offers an
alternative to Boolean/proximity searching. The TARGET search
interface was introduced in December 1993 as a more
user-friendly (syntax resembles (and pre-dates?) that of many
Web engines) and effective (with limitations) means for
searching DIALOG's full-text databases; results are returned in
relevance-ranked sets.

More info on TARGET is probably still available at DIALOG's web
site, although since they redesigned the site (a great argument
against frames) I haven't a clue where. If anyone's interested
in my paper---the product of a somewhat-harried grad student
last spring---let me know personally and I'll consider popping
it up on the Web.

Bob Duncan



   '~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'
     Robert E. Duncan
     Reference/Instruction Librarian
     David Bishop Skillman Library
     Lafayette College
     Easton, PA  18042
     duncanr at lafayette.edu
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