A system architecture for faceted querying

Abstract

This paper presents a system architecture that designs a querying refinement method. The method employs the general principles of facet analysis in a particular paradigm, as well as the notion of ‘focus’, which is a sort of context for a user query. The method provides the user with contextual information about the query, which is computed by using the user documents provided that the documents are organized according to a polyhierarchical classification. The method is situated within the formal framework of the smallest propositionally closed description logic ALC, thereby betting that ALC provides an efficient SAT solver that can be used to design and implement the main two components of the method.