Batch Processed IR System 

By 'batch processed IR system', we understand a system that processes several queries (information requests) in a batch. The documents file is searched and the references retrieved by each of the search queries is produced as output, one for each query. Batch processing was resorted to during the early stages of computing technologies because the technology available at that time made the processing of each query against the document file (database) expensive since computing power was expensive and was not easily available. Databases in batch-processed systems were typically on magnetic tape and hence it was more cost-effective to search several queries at a time rather than individually one query at a time.