3.98 textbase searches (38)
Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA)
Sun, 4 Jun 89 19:33:27 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 98. Sunday, 4 Jun 1989.
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 89 11:46:10 EDT
From: jonathan@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU (Jonathan Altman)
Subject: Re: 3.91 textbase searches?
[In response to David Mealand's query about benchmarks for textbase
searches]
I just did a very quick benchmark on the Dante Project database.
For details, here's the stats on our system. Computer is a VAX
11/785 running 4.3 Berkeley Unix with 16 MB of memory (before
complaining that I'm using a minicomputer and you want
workstation/PC comparisons, note that a VAXStation 3100 has more
crunching power than our Vax, as might my mac SE/30 if it had enough
memory). CPU load was low. Our software is BRS/Search. The files
associated with the Dante Project database total 123 MB approx. The
search was for "agostino" in the same sentence as "volonta." Search
time was under 2 seconds (I couldn't stop my watch fast enough to get a
better reading than that. Sorry.). Note that BRS/Search is a) a very
large, expensive text-retrieval system (although it is available in a
PC version which I have not seen) and b) designed to keep information
in index and dictionary files, so that my search did not actually check
the actual texts, but instead the dictionary files. Nonetheless, not
bad. I should also note that I could also search for those two
words next to each other, close (I can define "close") to each other,
and in specific order, should I choose.
Jonathan Altman jonathan@eleazar.Dartmouth.edu
Database Consultant jonathan.altman@Dartmouth.edu
Dartmouth Dante Project