Text retrieval-a trendy cocktail to address the dataworld

Speed, accuracy, portability, multilingual support are issues which play a key role in the assessment of the value of the text retrieval engine. Multimedia search capability is fast becoming a necessity as the data has become composite in recent times. Indexing speed and storage overhead, once the big issues in text retrieval systems, are becoming less and less important as hardware is getting better and cheaper day by day. Globalization of data has brought into emphasis how necessary multilingual support would be in text retrieval systems. End user availability of large amounts of data has also made it necessary for navigation tools to be endowed with a certain amount of intuitive intelligence to minimize the time spent in reaching data which is relevant to that person. The availability of data to assess the user pattern of search material would benefit the data providers in planning their presentation of data and methodology and grouping of data collection. This paper analyzes these issues in the light of a free text search engine developed with the Institute of Systems Science, Singapore