Tools for the Internet — Channelling the information tidal wave
| Published date | 01 February 1996 |
| Pages | 129-132 |
| Date | 01 February 1996 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045457 |
| Author | Stephen Cooke,Andrea Kauppila |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Focus Product Review
Tools for
the
Internet
—
channelling
the
information tidal wave
Stephen Cooke
and
Andrea Kauppila
InTEXT Systems
Europe,
Ambrose
House,
Milton
Road,
Swindon SN1
5JA,
UK
E-mail:
100640.1240@compuserv.com
http://www.intext.com
Abstract: InTEXT Systems delivers software products and technologies for
content-based
routing,
retrieval,
development and presentation for
mission-critical
workgroup,
Internet
and World
Wide Web
applications.
The
organisation is backed by over 12 years of focused research and development
in
the areas
of
intelligent analysis, routing and
retrieval.
The
tools described
in this
article are already
in use
by companies such as
American
Express,
Wollongong,
Pacific
Bell,
State of
California
and
Uniplex
software.
A complete object-oriented
toolset
covering all areas of
online text management
brings
significant benefits
to
developers,
through
greatly reduced programming
effort,
and to
end-users,
with
intelligent interfaces
helping
them
to cut
through the information
overload.
1.
Introduction
The Internet and World Wide Web ex-
plosion has created a tremendous need
for tools that support online (live) in-
formation, then profile and summarise
it,
based
on its
content. Interested read-
ers of electronic documents whose
level of interest, or indeed existence, is
unknown to the author will have to be
able to retrieve information relevant to
their needs from ever-increasing vol-
umes of data (Jones et
al.
1992). Jones
also says that the process of document
content analysis itself is not only la-
bour intensive but requires a consider-
able amount of skill and experience if
the reader is to determine whether the
original document is worth reading in
its entirety (Jones 1992). As these re-
sources become more stretched out
and volumes increase dramatically,
document summarisation is a job best
left to software.
All this means that organisations
will need intelligent Internet tools to
best utilise their online information as-
sets,
now and in the future.
The Internet and World Wide Web
provide online text to users world-
wide. Organisations developing Web
sites face three crucial requirements
for leveraging their Web site invest-
ment: to produce a scaleable, easy-to-
maintain Web site for cost efficiency;
to parse online (live) data, without in-
dexing, so as to have timely informa-
tion; and to use tools with content un-
derstanding to reduce information
overload.
The best way to produce a scale-
able, easy-to-maintain Web site is
through an open architecture. An open
textbase development architecture
should support extensive scalability
such as incremental user increases,
add-on technology, macro functional-
ity, APIs and extensibility for docu-
ment management, relational database
and application development environ-
ments.
Organisations must also be able to
profile
live,
online information so that
it remains timely. True online profil-
ing includes the ability to parse, sum-
marise and route information without
needing to index it. Intelligent proven
tools previously seen only at events
such as TREC (the Text Retrieval
Conference) are now available to de-
velopers in industrial strength soft-
ware products. Such tools summarise
documents automatically to reduce
network overhead, and also route live
newsfeeds to users based on profiles.
Technology using content
under-
standing is key to accessing the right
information quickly and precisely. In-
TEXT's intelligent
tools,
for example,
skim-read the surface structure of
documents and assess their informa-
tion content, or 'aboutness'. These
tools also self-tune to document col-
lections,
keeping organisations abreast
of new and evolving information.
2.
Wired world requirements
The World Wide Web is gaining
ground at a colossal rate: it is generat-
ing huge interest from all quarters and
looks to be unstoppable.
To have a
suc-
cessful Web site, organisations should
be aware of the following require-
ments:
2.1.
The
need for IS developers to
meet the organisation's expectations
Since organisations expect their
IS
de-
partment or systems integrators to
make their Web site competitive
quickly and inexpensively, IS devel-
opers have several requirements:
• low start-up costs;
• fast application development;
• distributed architecture;
• scalability;
• minimal tuning;
The Electronic Library, Vol. 14, No. 2, April 1996 129
To continue reading
Request your trial