Novel applications of information retrieval to the storage and management of computer models

Abstract

Decision-making is often supported by computer-based models. To become a truly valuable corporate resource, such models must be easy to locate, share, and reuse. We describe a technical approach to model management aimed at establishing a database of computer models which can either be reused without modification or modified and composed with other models to assist with novel decisions.We describe a formalism for representing models and discuss various types of queries supported by the formalism. We discuss important research issues that must be addressed for successful application of the formalism to model management. Further, we argue that the field of information retrieval is the natural referent discipline for the study of model storage and retrieval and advance the argument that retrieving computer based models has an important connection to text retrieval based on documents' structure.