Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: GOXML.COM: Context-based Searching
Author: Edd Dumbill Posted: 7/22/1999; 12:06:20 PM Topic: GOXML.COM: Context-based Searching Msg #: 8665 (In response to 8659) Prev/Next: 8664 / 8666
I agree. The immediate value to the user of this is limited by the fact that an XML document can have any form it's creator wants. It's like saying "this is a site to search any database anywhere". My intepretation ofmight be totally different to yours. However, there's definitely scope where the same DTDs are being used, as it basically becomes a database query tool. The RSS and scriptingNews formats are good examples where it would work, though the low complexity of the documents hardly makes the context searching worth it.
Jakob Nielsen's article on Content Integration (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990627.html) makes the point that for successful content integration, separate sources need to agree on standard for meta-data. There is a strong echo of this in searching web XML documents.
Web search engines work because we all use a limited and relatively defined number of character sets. For web-wide XML search engines to work, we'll need to use a limited and relatively defined number of DTDs, or provide a better way to self-describe.
I'm not sure searching the global totality of XML documents is something that would prove very useful anyway (any more than current search engines, that is): far more useful would be to navigate through various interest areas and then perform this kind of context search on a subset (which increases the chances of being able to do something intelligent with the query anyway). A sort of merging of ideas between XMLtree.com and GoXML.com perhaps??
Anyway, from a developer's point of view, GoXML.com sounds like a great deal of fun. When you get a huge bunch of data together, interesting things always happen, as evidenced by My.UserLand.Com.
There are responses to this message:
- Re: GOXML.COM: Context-based Searching, Matt MacKenzie, 7/22/1999; 12:21:11 PM
- Re: GOXML.COM: Context-based Searching, duane@goxml.com, 7/22/1999; 5:28:20 PM
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