Full-text scanning oers signicant advantages over other methods of document retrieval but is normally too slow for use on large collections. The Fujitsu AP1000 parallel distributed-memory machine has been used to reduce the time penalty for full-text scanning to acceptable interactive levels. The query language for the retrieval software (called PADRE) is described herein and dierences between PADRE and traditional systems are highlighted. The advantages of the full-text scanning in broader retrieval contexts are outlined. TREC precision-recall results are discussed and timings are reported.
David Hawking, Paul B. Thistlewaite