Kweepeer: Interactive Query Expansion Service

Introduction

The Globalise project requests an interactive query expansion webservice which expands terms in search queries with available synonyms and other suggestions. These expansions are returned to the caller, for display in a user interface, and the caller has control over which suggestions to accept or discard, offering a high degree of control over the final query. Please see the original plan for details and initial discussion.

This repository holds the backend service that provides query expansion, it is called Kweepeer (pronounceas /ˈkʋe.pɪːr/ or /ˈkwe.peːr/) and named after a fruit known as Quince in English.

Installation

From source

Production environments:

$ cargo install kweepeer

Development environments:

$ git clone git@github.com:knaw-huc/kweepeer.git
$ cd kweepeer
$ cargo install --path .

Architecture

This schema presents an architecture with some proposed expansion modules. The modules will be written in Rust, building on a common API, and compiled into the query expansion service. Module details may need to be worked out further.

flowchart TD
    app[/"Web Application (e.g. TextAnnoViz)"/]
    frontend["Query Expansion UI Component (frontend)"]
    backend[/"Query Expansion Webservice (backend)"/]
    search[/"Search engine (any software)"/]
    searchdb[("Search Index")]
    wrapper[/"Search wrapper service"/]

    app -- "initial search query" --> frontend

    frontend -- "search query (HTTP POST)" --> wrapper

    backend -- "expanded search query" --> wrapper
    search -- "search results" --> wrapper
    search --- searchdb

    wrapper -- "search query" --> backend

    wrapper -- "expanded search query (HTTP POST)" --> search
    wrapper -- "search results" --> frontend
    frontend -- "search results and expansions" --> app

    parser["Query parser"]
    subgraph modules 
        lexsimfst["Lexical Similarity Module 1 (FST, in-memory)"]
        lexsimanaliticcl["Lexical Similarity Module 2 (Analiticcl, in-memory)"]
        semsim["Semantic Similarity Module"]
        autocomplete["Autocompletion Module"]
        translator["Translation Module"]
        fst[("Finite State Transducer")]
        lexicon[("(Weighted) Lexicon")]
        lm[("Language Model (Transformer)")]
        tm[("Translation Model (Transformer)")]
    end

    parser["Query Parser/Lexer"]
    compositor["Query Compositor"]
    dispatcher["Dispatcher"]
    parser -- "search terms" --> dispatcher

    backend --> parser
    compositor -- "expanded search query" --> backend

    dispatcher <-- "search term" --> lexsimfst
    dispatcher <--> lexsimanaliticcl
    dispatcher <--> semsim
    dispatcher <--> autocomplete
    dispatcher <--> translator
    dispatcher -- "expanded search terms" --> compositor

    lexsimfst --- fst
    fst --- lexicon
    lexsimanaliticcl --- lexicon
    semsim --- lm
    autocomplete --- lm
    translator --- tm

    classDef external fill:#ccc,color:#111
    class app,search,searchdb external

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