| 摘要 |
To archive information, a phrase or sentence describing the information, typically expressed in a natural language and conforming to the rules of a grammar (like a natural language grammar) is used to create a structured index which also conforms to the natural language grammar. The structured index has structure because the words in the index have a function and a relationship among each other as determined by the grammar. The index is combined with a location pointer of information to be cataloged, preferably multimedia information, to form a matched pair, i.e., a structured index and a segment (or a pointer to a multimedia object). The matched pair is stored in a database for later retrieval. A heuristic interface presents the multimedia information along with a template in order to prompt the user into describing the multimedia information with a string of words so that they conform to the grammar. To retrieve the information, a user can use a query which is parsed according to the rules of grammar into a query structure in a way identical to or similar to the way the structured index was formed. This query structure is used to create a key which is used along with a searching algorithm to search the database of matched pairs. The search may be broadened to include words related to the words in the key. A list of matched pairs that match the key is returned. The segment of matched pairs in the list is used to locate and retrieve the archived multimedia information. <IMAGE> |
