Friday, January 26, 2007

Intranet metasearch tool lives on server


Dataware Technologies Inc. shipped a search server last week that lets companies create metasearch sites, which query multiple search engines and return the results in one Web page. The Internet offers many free metasearch sites, but Dataware II Knowledge Query Server lets companies create a Web application that can reside on an intranet or the Internet and query sources inside a company as well as outside.

Administrators can configure the server to search any source that's available via HTTP, including Internet search engines, news feeds, groupware servers, and document-management systems. The server groups related documents, eliminates duplicates, ranks documents by relevance, provides a summary of each, and cites its source.

Knowledge Query Server requires only a Web browser on client machines. Its server-based design distinguishes it from client-based metasearch products, says Fredric Gluck, VP of marketing at Dataware. Other search servers can search multiple sources in parallel. But, says Delphi Group analyst Carl Frappaolo, "The real power kicks in when Knowledge Query Server clusters the documents and shows you where the body of knowledge came from."

The Gale Group, a unit of $6 billion publisher Thomson Corp., is evaluating Knowledge Query Server for its online information services. Says Jay Levine, Gale's former chief technology officer, "Parallel search engines fit into our strategy of exposing more search capability through our online search bank. There are zillions [of parallel search engines] for the client side, but we needed something that could be integrated with our core server."

Dataware II Knowledge Query Server is available now for Windows NT 4.0 and Sun Solaris 2.5 or higher. Pricing starts at $9,500 for 500 users.




http://www.informationweek.com/702/02iuknw.htm