[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: xml search engine?
Kay: As far as I know, there is no clear difference between the notion of "query engine" and "search engine". In my understanding, "the query engine" is a broad concept meaning any procedure that returns "something" against "queries". On the other hand, search engine is a rather specific terminology that means any procedure that searches document space (including WWW) against queries. There is another concept often called "inference engine" that is able to infer some conclusion from logical statements. The inference engine is characterized by that it can deduce something that is not given in the original statement. The search engine you mention belongs to "inference engine", in general sense. The real issue about the XML search engine that can work across multiple DTDs is how we can associate "a name" in a DTD with "another name" in another DTD. Unfortunately, I cannot find any formal background to allow this, except the notion of vocabulary matching. Even in vocabulary matching (or transformation), we need some mapping in advace, which can not be obtained automatically. If we can get some mapping, it could be by heuristics, I believe. Dongwook Kay Michael wrote: > There have been XML search engines back as far as 1991 or thereabouts, > then operating of course under the rubric of SGML search > engines. ... > So there is a considerable body of experience as to what such > an API might > be like. For some reason, little of it is reflected in > XPath. W3C held > a workshop on the notion of a query language for XML back in 1998... I really think you need to distinguish between a query engine and a search engine. Query engines answer questions like "find me all documents that have an <xyz> element as the third grandchild of an <abc> element". Search engines answer questions like "have you got anything about the causes of hyperinflation in inter-war Germany?" Search engines will use markup tags and namespaces as hints to assess the relevance of the document to the user's line of enquiry, just as they use the text. That's quite different from query, which is looking for definite matches to definite boolean conditions. Mike Kay ******** ****************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ ************************************************************************** -- Dongwook Shin Visiting Scholar Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications National Library of Medicine, 8600 Rockville Pike Bethesda 20894, MD E-mail: dwshin@n... Tel: (301) 435-3257 FAX: (301) 480-3035 URL: http://dlb2.nlm.nih.gov/~dwshin *************************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ ***************************************************************************
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