REALM: The Retrieval Algebra Model and its Implementation

Abstract

We propose a model based on a mathematical framework for the integration of database and information retrieval models on top of the traditional relational model.We do not require any extensions of the relational model.Our model supports easily and uniformly naive user languages for accessing information using traditional boolean and several fuzzy retrieval languages.In this model both queries and objects are represented as (base) relations and the evaluation of queries is equivalent to the computation of algebraic expressions of the base relations.The implementation of the model on top of a traditional RDBMS supports the most popular information retrieval models of the literature.