Configuring Retrieval - Controls

Controls are methods for configuring retrieval. Controls are set using the setControl() method in SearchRequest, and accessible to retrieval code via the Request object. They are re-read for every query, therefore, they allow the configuration of the search engine to be adjusted on a per-query basis.

Manager

| Control Name | Default | Description | |—————-|———-|————————————————————| | start | 0 | Offset of first document to be retrieved, 0-based | | end | unset | Offset of last document to be retrieved, 0-based | | wmodel | DPH | Name of the weighting model to use during retrieval | | terrierql | on | Asks the Manager to parse an end-user query | | parseql | on | Asks the Manager to map a parsed end-user query into MatchOp format | | parsecontrols| on | Asks the Manager to remove any controls from the user’s query | | matchopql | off | Asks the Manager to parse a MatchOp formatted query. When used, terrierql, parseql should be set to off | | applypipeline| on | Asks the Manager to apply the term pipeline to the query | | localmatching| on | Controls if matching should be applied to the query | | matching | org.terrier.matching.daat.Full | Name of the matching class to run | | decorate | on | Controls if decoration should occur, i.e. decorating the ResultSet with metadata | | qe | off | Controls if query expansion should be applied | | filters | on | Controls if any post-filters should be applied for the query | | site | off | Performs hostname suffix matching as a PostFilter, like on web search engines. Requires the ResultSet to be decorated with “url” metadata | | labels | off | Adds the labels to documents in the ResultSet, using org.terrier.learning.LabelDecorator. Require the qrels file to have been set, using property learning.labels.file. |

Weighting Models

| Control Name | Default | Description | |—————-|———-|——————————————————————————-| | bm25.b | 0.75 | Length normalisation parameter of BM25 | | dfr.c | 1 | Length normalisation parameter of DFR weighting models based on Norm2, e.g. PL2 |

Query Expansion

QueryExpansion occurs when the qe control is set to on. From the batchretrieve commandline, this can be achieved using -q or -c qe:on arguments.

| Control Name | Default | Description | |————–|———-|———————————————————–| | qemodel | Bo1 | Name of the query expansion model | | qe_fb_terms| 10 (obtained from property) | Number of expansion terms to add | | qe_fb_docs | 3 (obtained from property) | Number of pseudo-relevance feedback documents to analyse |


Webpage: http://terrier.orgContact: School of Computing ScienceCopyright (C) 2004-2020 University of Glasgow. All Rights Reserved.