An information retrieval query language is a query language used to make queries into database, where the semantics of the query are defined not by a precise rendering of a formal syntax, but by an interpretation of the most suitable results of the query.
Of importance in IR query languages is weighting and ranking, "relevance-orientation", semantic relativism and logic-based probabilism.
An example of an IR query language is Contextual Query Language (CQL), a formal language for representing queries to Information Retrieval systems such as web indexes, bibliographic catalogs and museum collection information.
Famous quotes containing the words information, query and/or language:
“On the breasts of a barmaid in Sale
Were tattooed the prices of ale;
And on her behind
For the sake of the blind
Was the same information in Braille.”
—Anonymous.
“Such condition of suspended judgment indeed, in its more genial development and under felicitous culture, is but the expectation, the receptivity, of the faithful scholar, determined not to foreclose what is still a question—the “philosophic temper,” in short, for which a survival of query will be still the salt of truth, even in the most absolutely ascertained knowledge.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“The great pines stand at a considerable distance from each other. Each tree grows alone, murmurs alone, thinks alone. They do not intrude upon each other. The Navajos are not much in the habit of giving or of asking help. Their language is not a communicative one, and they never attempt an interchange of personality in speech. Over their forests there is the same inexorable reserve. Each tree has its exalted power to bear.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)