ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted Search

Some examples of applied faceted search

on websites developed by the EP

Jerry Hilbert

European Parliament

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search - Definition

Faceted search, also called faceted navigation or faceted browsing, is a

technique for accessing a collection of information represented using a faceted

classification, allowing users to explore by filtering available information. A

faceted classification system allows the assignment of multiple

classifications to an object, enabling the classifications to be ordered in

multiple ways, rather than in a single, pre-determined, taxonomic order. Each

facet typically corresponds to the possible values of a

property common to a set of digital objects.Facets are often derived by analysis of the text of an item using entity extraction

techniques or from pre-existing fields in the database such as author, descriptor,

language, and format. This approach permits existing web-pages, product

descriptions or articles to have this extra metadata extracted and presented as a

navigation facet

Source: Wikipedia

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search - Technology

Different search engines offer nowadays the possibility for faceted search.

The EP uses SolR, based on LUCENE.

Solr is an open source enterprise search platform from the Apache Lucene project. Its

major features include powerful full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search, dynamic

clustering, database integration, and rich document (e.g., Word, PDF) handling. Providing

distributed search and index replication, Solr is highly scalable.

Solr is written in Java and runs as a standalone full-text search server within a servlet

container such as Apache Tomcat. Solr uses the Lucene Java search library at its core for

full-text indexing and search, and has REST-like HTTP/XML and JSON APIs that make it

easy to use from virtually any programming language. Solr's powerful external configuration

allows it to be tailored to almost any type of application without Java coding, and it has an

extensive plugin architecture when more advanced customization is required.

Source: Wikipedia

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search - Technology

How is Lucene/Solr used?

XML IN – XML OUT

XML IN: Data is structured in XML when submitting for indexation

XML OUT: Data is returned as XML (including facet details) as the result of a

search

Also, configuration of the search engine for free text

- number of terms to match

- relevance of the terms, according to the field they are associated to

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websites

In the coming slides examples of faceted search as applied

on websites developed by the EP will be shown for:

- The Legislative Observatory of the EP

- Public Register of documents

- IPEX

- ECPRD

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websites

OEIL

Legislative Observatory of the EP

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil

(old version of the site)

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websitesOEIL: Legislative Observatory

OEIL contains legislative, budgetary, non-legislative and

internal parliamentary procedures, such as:

• Co-decision, consultation and assent procedure

• budgetary and discharge procedures

• own-initiative reports by the European Parliament

• appointments, waivers of immunity and changes to the Rules of Procedure (i.e.

internal EP procedures)

• resolutions and recommendations adopted by the European Parliament

• documents forwarded for information from the Commission (during the last 9

months).

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websitesOEIL: Legislative Observatory

Situation before implementing faceted search

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websitesOEIL: Legislative Observatory

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Challenges for applying facets in OEIL:

(1)Sequence of facets

• Parliamentary term, …

(2)Protocol order for returned matches in the facets

• Political groups, Commission DGs, etc.

(3)Facets with huge results of additional criteria

• Rapporteurs (possibly a few hundred)

(4)Facets for structured keywords list

• Legal Basis (Treaty to Article)

(5) Length of words

Faceted search – EP websitesOEIL: Legislative Observatory

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websitesOEIL: Legislative Observatory

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Where facets can help out:

(1)Date range searches

(2)Structured references of procedures or documents

Faceted search – EP websitesOEIL: Legislative Observatory

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websites

Public Register of documents

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/registre/

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websitesPublic Register

Documents accessible through the Register

• 5 main categories of documents

• Parliamentary activity

• EP general information

• From other institutions and Member States

• Documents from third parties

• Budgetary procedure

• 125 types of documents

• 362.217 References

• 2.386.485 Documents (All LV)

• List defined by EP Bureau

References Documents

December 2007 207.069 1.306.059

December 2008 262.000 1.682.774

December 2009 310.760 1.998.330

December 2010 362.217 2.386.485

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websitesPublic Register

Public Register / Metadata

• Usually for each document :

• reference number

• title

• dates

• summary

• authorities

• authors

• relations

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websitesPublic Register

Situation before implementing faceted search

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websitesPublic Register

Situation before implementing faceted search

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websitesPublic Register

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websitesPublic Register

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websitesPublic Register

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websites

IPEX

Interparliamentary EU Information Exchange

http://www.ipex.eu

(old version of the site)

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

The IPEX Database contains a complete catalog of Commission

documents from 2006.

From each Commission document users can click on "Related dossiers"

and from there access national scrutiny pages.

Each national scrutiny page contains documents from the individual

national parliaments relating to the specific Commission document or

legislative procedure.

IPEX also hosts a calendar of interparliamentary cooperation which

contains information concerning all interparliamentary meetings

relating to the European Union.

Faceted searchIPEX: Interparliamentary EU Information Exchange

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted searchIPEX: Interparliamentary EU Information Exchange

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted searchIPEX: Interparlamentary EU Information exchange

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Challenge:

How to guarantee that the result lists presents

the information in its context

Faceted searchIPEX: Interparlamentary EU Information exchange

Dossier

Documents

Scrutinies

Private forums

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted searchIPEX: Interparlamentary EU Information exchange

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search – EP websites

ECPRD

European Center for Parliamentary

Research and Documentation

http://www.ecprd.org

(private site)

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted searchECPRD: European Center for Parliamentary Research and

Documentation

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted searchECPRD: European Center for Parliamentary Research and

Documentation

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted searchECPRD: European Center for Parliamentary Research and

Documentation

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted searchECPRD: European Center for Parliamentary Research and

Documentation

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

For the next release an extension to the current (new) search

implementation is foreseen:

Using the key facet for Thesaurus entries as a privileged

entry point to find relevant objects on the site

(i.e. Taking benefit of XML structured output of facettes to use

it as a way to navigate to the good records)

Faceted searchECPRD: European Center for Parliamentary Research and

Documentation

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search

Conclusions

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search

Conclusions

- One size don’t fit it all

- Advanced search may be required for pre-selection

- Challenges show when large result lists are returned

- Site wide searches require to recall the context of the object

- Analysis starts when indexing, not when producing result lists

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search

Conclusions

- Easily comprehensible and powerfull drill up&down feature

- Flexible to adapt to future queries

-No ‘0 result lists’ when drilling

- Statistical follow of ‘to expect’ results

ECPRD seminar “Parli@ments on the net IX”, Brussels, 2011

Faceted search

Thanks for your attention!

Questions?