xml-dev - Re: XML Search Engine

[Fernando Cabral <fernando@pix.com.br>]

Tim Bray wrote:

> Well, I just went and checked their financials, and while they
> actually showed a bit of profit I observe that their revenue,
> for this quarter against the same quarter last year, is declining
> (down from $5.4m to $4.8m) and the 3/4 results are down from $14.6m
> to $14.2m.  This is the high-growth Internet/Software field?  I repeat
> my claim that this is not a good busines to be in.
>

Perhaps because they have been investing a lot in a newproduct named KMS (Knowledge
Management Suite) and
kind of forgetting BRS itself.

> >About two years ago Dataware launched EPMS, now renamed
> >Dataware II Publisher. This is a version of BRS entirely based
> >on SGML (it reads from about 300 different formats, converts
> >and stores as an SGML file, and allows you to do text retrieval
> >both in the traditional way as well as in a more SGML-like way.
> >
> >Of course, it can read and index directly SGML, XML and HTML.
>
> Can anyone else substantiate this?  Last time I looked at BRS/search,
> it was a very traditional atomic-document thing; it had some fielded
> search, but it could only *find* documents.  Obviously for XML you
> need to find elements.  It would be great if BRS was really
> SGML/XML-savvy.

Perhaps you should read again what I said. The product is not BRS/Search,it is
Dataware II Publisher (formely EPMS). It is a "version"  of BRS
because it uses pretty much the same basic technology. On the other
hand, it is entirely different because the internal format is SGML,
so it allows for searchs in the SGML style (as opposed to "paragraph"
qualification). As the manual says (page 136): "You can search your
publication by SGML element tags. For example, you
can search your publications by the TITLE element".

You can also design style sheets based on the SGML tags for printing
and displaying purposes. BRS itself does not know anything about
SGML, but Dataware II Publisher certainly does. I have been using
the product for several months now. I have a number of publications
in it, including some of the Shakespeare works (markup by Jon Bosak - Moby Lexical
Tools)

I am not as knowledgeable as you on SGML/XML so I can not garantee
100% compatibility with SGML. What I can say is that I like what
I have. To me it looks like what any XML user would like to
see in a search engine.

> .>Talking about money, it is quite clear that IBM made a lotof money selling
> >STAIRS. Now it is musty but for more
> >than 20 years it reigned undisputed undisputed in the mainframe
> >kingdom.
>
> Here we agree.  IBM made some serious money with STAIRS (I suspect
> mostly by selling mainframes to run it on).
>
> >So, I think the right conclusion is that in the low-end line of products
> >where quality/functionality is disputable and price is very low
> >(PC DOCs, Verity...) there is no real money. On the other hand,
> >vendors aiming the high-end market should not complain.
>
> I don't the evidence supports this view.
>
> >Own experience is that relational vendors are complete uncapableof providing a
> >good solution for text retrieval. The products
> >are usually very poor on the funcionality side and miserable on
> >the performance side.
>
> That's really interesting information.  This is about the 5th time
> I've heard this; always anecdotal evidence, but it adds up. -Tim
>
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--
Fernando Cabral                         Padrao iX Sistemas Abertos
mailto:fernando@pix.com.br              http://www.pix.com.br
                                        mailto:Pix@Pix.com.br
Fone: +55 61 321-2433                   Fax: +55 61 225-3082
15º 45' 04.9" S                         47º 49' 58.6" W
19º 37' 57.0" S                         45º 17' 13.6" W




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