[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Automating Search Interfaces
I have a tendency to talk about things yet to happen as if I saw it happen, so I must first beg the reader to understand that what follows are just an opinion of a man. >>As particular industries and special interests standardize on their >>respective DTDs, Internet search engines will have to allow users to >>search by specific elements contained in those documents. In the typical >>search scenario, a user would use one of the major search services such >>as AltaVista or Yahoo. Lets say the user wanted to search across real >>estate listings, and these listings all used the same DTD. It seems that >> >>independent search engines need to interpret the DTD for a class of >>documents and present a query interface based on that DTD. The question >>is: how is the search engine to interpret the DTD and build an >>intelligent interface based on that DTD? Simply listing every element in >> >>the DTD is one approach, but an ugly one. Many DTDs will contain >>numerous elements which would only clutter and confuse a search >>interface. Standardized schemas will not be there for some time. Effects of XML will be felt by all major industries in the near future, and while there will be sincere efforts to standardize DTDs in most of the markets, fiercely competitive markets like the search service market will be slow in standardizing schemas. I expect another round of tag wars waged this time by Yahoo, Excite, AltaVista, MS, etc. The result will be different this time in that everyone will agree to disagree in the end and move on to building tools to bridge the differences in structures of contents which would have accumulated beyond the point of standardizing. Schema-based universal search interface will be dead upon arrival. While it is possible to build such clients, search services that use them will lose everytime to services offering hand-crafted search interfaces designed to be easy to use, relevantly flexible, and visually appealing. Improved accuracy of search results, brought on by wide availability of XML-based contents, will be lost to most users. Consumers simply do not care as long as they can find what they want among first 100 items returned by a search. Search services are free after all and therefore do not place high expectations. What consumers will care mostly about is the 'freshness' of search results. All of the widely used search services are currently selling stale information, a lot of it damaged goods. There is not much demand for freshness now but the need will rise dramatically along with the growth of e-commerce. XML will bring on new search services which broadcasts search requests to hundreds to thousands of 'datasites' to get the freshest goods. It will take tools to build datasites and applications to create contents for the datasites. It is not hard to guess who will be the major player in the next generation of search services. What I see happening is proliferation of custom DTDs designed around the contents. Amazon will not want to throw out some information just so they can use some standard DTD. It is like saying that they will chop your arms off just so they can use the standard-size coffin. Amazon will use a custom DTD designed to hold all of their valuable contents including book reviews. They will offer some, and definitely not all, layers of the contents to search services by dynamically mapping its DTD to the search service's DTD. In another word, DTD used to store content will not necessarily be same as DTD used to transfer. It is sad to think so but we will also see more and more contents moving behind protection. XML makes 'data-spies', 'data-pirates', and 'data-chop-shops' possible. You will see 'hot-data' detective robots roaming the net to see if any piece of a site's data is based on its clients' data based on some intentional mangling of words and images with hidden signatures. I hope I did not upset everyone with my 'it sure is obvious to me' attitude. My sole intention is to help the XML community. If I make some money along the way, I can live with it. I think <g>. Sincerely, Don Park http://www.quake.net/~donpark/index.html xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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