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1.2.5 Search Capabilities

Hyperwave Information Server provides intuitive search capabilities that allow you to access information quickly and efficiently. Full-text and metadata search engines mean that you can search in indexed attributes (with Boolean combinations) as well as in the content of documents. For example, you could search for:

ATTRIBUTES

Hyperwave Information Server integrates Verity's Search97 product, which is able to index more than 200 document formats. You can also use the native Hyperwave search engine. As well as searching indexed attributes, as described above, you can search in the full text of documents, using the following advanced features:

FULL TEXT

It is also possible to search for words or phrases in specific XML tags.

Figure 6: Extended Search dialog box
Figure 6 shows the Extended Search dialog box of the default user interface that comes with Hyperwave Information Server. Of course, this interface is completely configurable, as with all other Hyperwave Information Server functions.

SCOPE

An important feature of Extended Search is the ability to specify the search scope. Unlike many other search engines, which only let you search the whole information space, Hyperwave Information Server allows you to restrict the scope to a certain subset of the collection hierarchy. The scope can be set as one collection, a set of collections, the whole server, or even a set of collections residing on different Hyperwave Information Servers. This is an extremely useful feature, since it lets you (the user, not the information provider!) narrow down the search to a specific subset of the information you are currently interested in, and significantly reduces the number of unwanted hits.

Figure 7: Search Results dialog box
Searching is tightly integrated with navigation, so that when you navigate to a particular collection and press the Search button at that point, the scope is by default set to the collection you are currently visiting. Conversely, when you have selected a search result (hit), you can explore the "vicinity" of the selected object in the collection hierarchy, and perhaps find more useful information related to the subject you have been looking for. Search hits are shown as a ranked list (see Figure 7). You can also decide whether you want 10, 25 or 50 results displayed per page.

1.2.5.1 Saved Queries and Notifications

The Search Results dialog box (Figure 7) has a button labeled Save Query at the bottom, which lets you store the query you just made as an object in the repository (see Figure 8), and re-evaluate it again and again. This query object is displayed as an object in the collection hierarchy. When you select a query object, it behaves like a collection. However, the members of the collection are not statically linked to it, but rather are generated dynamically as you evaluate the query. This is a very powerful feature, as it allows new, dynamic views of existing material.

EXAMPLE

Imagine you are a user interested in what events are taking place in the next month. However, you are only interested in events that deal with intranets. With the Stored Queries feature of Hyperwave Information Server, you can create a personal calendar of intranet-related events by specifying a query that searches for documents containing "intranet" (and perhaps also "extranet" and "knowledge management", for example) in their title or full text. You can then save this query to your home collection. Whenever you navigate to this query object, you will get a list containing all the events relevant to intranets. Starting with Hyperwave Information Server Version 5.0, you can also set query objects to the type What's New. When you activate a What's New query object, you will get a list of all items found since the last time you activated the query object. You can also have a system administrator set up query objects for you.

NOTIFICATIONS

Stored Queries do not have to be activated by users; they can also be performed by the system according to a schedule specified by the user (Query Object Type is set to Scheduled). In this case, users may "subscribe" to the query object and receive e-mail in either HTML or ASCII format with descriptions and URLs of the objects found. In this way, you can use the Notifications feature to keep up to date with information that changes rapidly. Instruct the system to perform the query every Monday morning (for example) and you will have instant access to up-to-date information, as you need it.

Figure 8: Save Query dialog box
EXAMPLE

For example, you could slightly modify the query specified in our previous example to only return intranet events, which have been created or updated within the last 24 hours. Then you could let the system evaluate the query daily (at a certain time), and send you the result, if any, by e-mail. You can then forget about the query object and relax; the Hyperwave Information Server will automatically inform you of new events or changes in events related to intranets.

Please note that in principle the notification functionality is similar to what has become known as channels, push technology, or subscription services. An important difference, however, is that with Hyperwave Information Server, users are no longer passive consumers of prepackaged information channels. Rather, it is the users who are in the driver's seat and perform their own "information mining" according to their objectives, effectively creating their own channels.

For more information on Hyperwave Information Server's search capabilities, see page 33.

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