A full-text database or a complete-text database is a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

that contains the complete text of

book A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, ...

s, dissertations, journals,

magazine A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...

newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as poli ...

s or other kinds of textual

document A document is a writing, written, drawing, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of nonfiction, non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ', which denotes ...

s. They differ from

bibliographic database A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records. This is an organised online collection of references to published written works like academic journal, journal and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government an ...

s (which contain only bibliographical

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

, including abstracts in some cases) and non-bibliographic databases (such as directories and

numeric database A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

s). One of the earliest systems was IBM STAIRS, introduced in 1973. Full-text databases became common about 1990 when computer storage technology made them economic and technologically possible. There are two main classes: an extension of the classical bibliographical databases into full-text databases (e.g. on hosts such as BRS, Dialog,

LexisNexis LexisNexis is an American data analytics company headquartered in New York, New York. Its products are various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper searc ...

and Westlaw) and Internet-based full-text databases (based on

search engine A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...

s or

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

References

{{reflist *Tenopir, Carol & Ro, Jung Soon (1990). ''Full Text Databases''. New York: Greenwood Press.

See also

References