This project will tackle the problem of making sense of the vast quantity of raw data available on the Internet today.
A user trying to find data on the Internet today would almost always start at one of the popular Search Engines (Yahoo, Lycos etc). Whilst these search engines typically yield good results they have one fundamental flaw. Namely, the data they are searching upon is a database copy of what actually exists on the Internet. This can often mean the data is out of date.
The project as proposed will provide a solution to this problem by performing live searches of Internet or Intranet content. It will be presented in two parts.
Part one, a review of research and technologies in this area.
This will review a range of different solutions to the problem and draw some useful conclusions from this body of work.
Part two, produce an Internet/Intranet Searching Engine.
This search engine will be capable of searching Internet and Intranet sites. The value-added part of the project will be to provide different types of filters for the searches. The filters will be plug-in components. The initial one will be a text filter for matching words. Other filters could be graphic filters for finding graphic files, or a more advanced text filter to match similar words. The Engine will be designed in such a way that the filters can be designed, written and implemented after the project is finished and will simply plug in to place.