EFFECTIVELY SEARCHING SPECIMEN AND OBSERVATION DATA WITH TOQE, THE THESAURUS OPTIMIZED QUERY EXPANDER
Main Article Content
Abstract
Today’s specimen and observation data portals lack a flexible mechanism, able to link up thesaurus-enabled data sources such as taxonomic checklist databases and expand user queries to related terms, significantly enhancing result sets. The TOQE system (Thesaurus Optimized Query Expander) is a REST-like XML web-service implemented in Python and designed for this purpose. Acting as an interface between portals and thesauri, TOQE allows the implementation of specialized portal systems with a set of thesauri supporting its specific focus. It is both easy to use for portal programmers and easy to configure for thesaurus database holders who want to expose their system as a service for query expansions. Currently, TOQE is used in four specimen and observation data portals. The documentation is available from http://search.biocase.org/toqe/.
Article Details
Issue
Section
Articles (peer-reviewed)
Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. All articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.