A direct manipulation interface for boolean information retrieval

摘要

A method and apparatus that translates a natural language query into a Boolean expression to be used to search a database. The Boolean expression is displayed on a screen so that the user can alter the Boolean expression using a mouse or similar input device and re-execute the search. The manipulations performed by the user include moving terms of the query, changing the order in which query terms are evaluated, adding terms, deleting terms, and selecting alternate versions of terms.