Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2007. / A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the College of Health & Science, School of Computing and Mathematics, University of Western Sydney. Includes bibliography.

This research is concerned with some aspects of the retrieval of information from database systems by casual, naive computer users. A "casual user" is defined as an individual who only wishes to execute queries perhaps once or twice a month, and a "naive user" is someone who has little or no expertise in operating a computer and, more specifically for the purposes of this study, is not practiced at querying a database. The research initially focuses on a specific group of casual, naive users, namely a group of clinicians, and analyzes their characteristics as they pertain to the retrieval of information from a computer database. The characteristics thus elicited are then used to create the requirements for a database interface that would, potentially, be acceptable to this group. An interface having the desired requirements is then proposed. This interface consists, from a user's perspective, of three basic components. A graphical model gives a picture of the database structure. Windows give the ability to view different areas of the database, physically group together items that come under one logical heading and provide the user with immediate access to the data item names used by the system. Finally, a natural language query language provides a means of entering a query in a syntax (that of ordinary English) which is familiar to the user. The graphical model is a logical abstraction of the database. Unlike other database interfaces, it is not constrained by the model (relational, hierarchical, network) underlying the database management system, with the one caveat that the graphical model should not imply any connections which cannot be supported by the management system. Versions of the interface are implemented on both eight-bit and sixteen-bit microcomputers, and testing is conducted in order to validate the acceptability of the interface and to discover the level of graphical model which the users find most acceptable. The results of this testing are reported and further areas for research suggested.

Das Thema Information Retrieval hat insbesondere in Form von Internetsuchmaschinen eine große Bedeutung erlangt. Retrievalsysteme werden für eine Vielzahl unterschiedlicher Rechercheszenarien eingesetzt, unter anderem für firmeninterne Supportdatenbanken, aber auch für die Organisation persönlicher E-Mails. Eine aktuelle Herausforderung besteht in der Bestimmung und Vorhersage der Leistungsfähigkeit einzelner Komponenten dieser Retrievalsysteme, insbesondere der komplexen Wechselwirkungen zwischen ihnen. Für die Implementierung und Konfiguration der Retrievalsysteme und der Retrievalkomponenten werden Fachleute benötigt. Mithilfe der webbasierten Lernanwendung Xtrieval Web Lab können Studierende praktisches Wissen über den Information Retrieval Prozess erwerben, indem sie Retrievalkomponenten zu einem Retrievalsystem zusammenstellen und evaluieren, ohne dafür eine Programmiersprache einsetzen zu müssen. Spielemechaniken leiten die Studierenden bei ihrem Entdeckungsprozess an, motivieren sie und verhindern eine Informationsüberladung durch eine Aufteilung der Lerninhalte. / Information retrieval has achieved great significance in form of search engines for the Internet. Retrieval systems are used in a variety of research scenarios, including corporate support databases, but also for the organization of personal emails. A current challenge is to determine and predict the performance of individual components of these retrieval systems, in particular the complex interactions between them. For the implementation and configuration of retrieval systems and retrieval components professionals are needed. By using the web-based learning application Xtrieval Web Lab students can gain practical knowledge about the information retrieval process by arranging retrieval components in a retrieval system and their evaluation without using a programming language. Game mechanics guide the students in their discovery process, motivate them and prevent information overload by a partition of the learning content.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-23T14:33:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Walber.pdf: 1673761 bytes, checksum: 5ada541492a23b9653e4a80bea3aaa40 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-08-30 / A System for Selective Dissemination of Information is a type of information system that aims to harness new intellectual products, from any source, for environments where the probability of interest is high. The inherent challenge is to establish a computational model that maps specific information needs, to a large audience, in a personalized way. Therefore, it is necessary to mediate informational structure of unit, so that includes a plurality of attributes to be considered by process of content selection. In recent publications, systems are proposed based on text markup data (meta-data models), so that treatment of manifest information between computing semi-structured data and inference mechanisms on meta-models. Such approaches only use the data structure associated with the profile of interest. To improve this characteristic, this paper proposes construction of a system for selective dissemination of information based on analysis of multiple discourses through automatic generation of conceptual graphs from texts, introduced in solution also unstructured data (text). The proposed model is motivated by Cross-Document Structure Theory, introduced in area of Natural Language Processing, focusing on automatic generation of summaries. The model aims to establish correlations between semantic of discourse, for example, if there are identical information, additional or contradictory between multiple texts. Thus, an aspects discussed in this dissertation is that these correlations can be used in process of content selection, which had already been shown in other related work. Additionally, the algorithm of the original model is revised in order to make it easy to apply / Um Sistema de Disseminação Seletiva da Informação é um tipo de Sistema de Informação que visa canalizar novas produções intelectuais, provenientes de quaisquer fontes, para ambientes onde a probabilidade de interesse seja alta. O desafio computacional inerente é estabelecer um modelo que mapeie as necessidades específicas de informação, para um grande público, de modo personalizado. Para tanto, é necessário mediar à estruturação da unidade informacional, de maneira que contemple a pluralidade de atributos a serem considerados pelo processo de seleção de conteúdo. Em recentes publicações acadêmicas, são propostos sistemas baseados em marcação de dados sobre textos (modelos de meta-dados), de forma que o tratamento da informação manifesta-se entre computação de dados semi-estruturados e mecanismos de inferência sobre meta-modelos. Tais abordagens utilizam-se apenas da associação da estrutura de dados com o perfil de interesse. Para aperfeiçoar tal característica, este trabalho propõe a construção de um sistema de disseminação seletiva da informação baseado em análise de múltiplos discursos por meio da geração automática de grafos conceituais a partir de textos, concernindo à solução também os dados não estruturados (textos). A proposta é motivada pelo modelo Cross-Document Structure Theory, recentemente difundido na área de Processamento de Língua Natural, voltado para geração automática de resumos. O modelo visa estabelecer correlações de natureza semântica entre discursos, por exemplo, se existem informações idênticas, adicionais ou contraditórias entre múltiplos textos. Desse modo, um dos aspectos discutidos nesta dissertação é que essas correlações podem ser usadas no processo de seleção de conteúdo, o que já fora evidenciado em outros trabalhos correlatos. Adicionalmente, o algoritmo do modelo original é revisado, a fim de torná-lo de fácil aplicabilidade

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