Access methods for text

Abstract

This paper compares text retrieval methods intended for office systems. The operational requirements of the office environment are discussed, and retrieval methods from database systems and from information retrieval systems are examined. We classify these methods and examine the most interesting representatives of each class. Attempts to speed up retrieval with special purpose hardware are also presented, and issues such as approximate string matching and compression are discussed. A qualitative comparison of the examined methods is presented. The signature file method is discussed in more detail.