edu.ucsb.adl.middleware
Interface Ranker

All Known Implementing Classes:

DateRanker, SpatialRanker

public interface Ranker

A query result ranker. The ADL middleware creates the ranker for a query by dynamically loading the ranker class and calling the class method

public static Ranker createRanker (String argument)

where argument is a ranker-specific startup parameter.

Version:

$Header: /export/home/gjanee/middleware/edu/ucsb/adl/middleware/RCS/Ranker.java,v 1.2 2003/06/09 21:07:46 gjanee Exp $

$Log: Ranker.java,v $ Revision 1.2 2003/06/09 21:07:46 gjanee
Query results are now Result objects, i.e., triplets of standard metadata views.

Revision 1.1 2000/02/27 23:00:05 gjanee
Initial revision

Author:

Greg Janée
Alexandria Digital Library

Method Summary

double

rank(edu.ucsb.adl.middleware.Result result, edu.ucsb.adl.middleware.Query query) Ranks a query result.

Method Detail

rank

public double rank(edu.ucsb.adl.middleware.Result result,
                   edu.ucsb.adl.middleware.Query query)
            throws InternalErrorException

Ranks a query result. This method need not be multithread-safe.

Parameters:

result - The result.

query - The query that produced the result. Because a ranker services only a single query, this argument is invariant over the lifetime of the ranker.

Returns:

The result's rank. A larger value indicates a higher rank.

Throws:

InternalErrorException - If any error occurs.