Comparing Xml-ir Query Formation Interfaces

摘要

XML information retrieval (XML-IR) systems differ from traditional information retrieval systems by using structure of XML documents to retrieve more specific units of information than the documents themselves. Users interact with XML-IR systems via structured queries that express their content and structural requirements. Historically, it has been common belief within the XML-IR community that structured queries will perform better than traditional keyword-only queries. However, recent system-orientated analysis has show that this assumption may be incorrect when system performance is averaged over a set of queries. Here, we test this assumption with users via a simulated work task experiment. We compare a keyword only interface with two user friendly XML-IR interfaces: NLPX, a natural language interface and Bricks, a query-by-template interface. This is the first time that a XML-IR natural language interface has been tested in user experiments. We compare the retrieval performance of all three interfaces and the usability of the two structured interfaces. Our results correspond to those of the system-orientated evaluation and indicate that structured queries do not aid retrieval performance. They also show that in terms of retrieval performance and usability the structured interfaces are comparable.