Applied Distributed Information Retrieval in Enterprise Search

Distributed enterprise search as a special case of Distributed Information Retrieval (DIR) is characterized by the need to query multiple repositories in enterprise environments. However, in DIR research there is a lack of publicly available real-world datasets for evaluation purposes. As a result, there is a gap between insights gained from simulated environments and real-world investigations on distributed enterprise search. In this paper, we outline three fundamental issues based on our investigations of a large real-world distributed enterprise search system. We found that (1) the utilization of security features in enterprise repositories, (2) the adaptation of resource description and resource selection for enterprise model, and (3) repository grouping are fundamental real-world issues. We hypothesize that a better understanding of these issues will contribute to improve the distributed enterprise search and better support complex search tasks in enterprise environments. Based on our experience gained from a real-world system, we also outline needed steps to cope with these issues.