A comparison of a network structure and a database system used for document retrieval

Database systems have many advantages for implementing document retrieval systems. One of the main advantages would be the integration of data and text handling in a single information system. However, it has not been clear how much a database implementation would cost in terms of efficiency. In this paper, we compare a database implementation and a stand-alone implementation of a flexible representation of the content of documents and the associated search strategies. The representation used is a network of document and index term nodes. The comparison shows that certain features of a database system can have a significant effect on the efficiency of the implementation. Despite this, it appears that a database implementation of a sophisticated document retrieval system can be competitive with a stand-alone implementation.