We are poised at a major turning point in the history of information management via computers.
Recent evolutions in computing communications and commerce are fundamentally reshaping the
ways in which we humans interact with information and generating enormous volumes of
electronic data along the way. As a result of these forces what will data management
technologies and their supporting software and system architectures look like in ten years?
It is difficult to say but we can see the future taking shape now in a new generation of
information access platforms that combine strategies and structures of two familiar -- and
previously quite distinct -- technologies search engines and databases and in a new model for
software applications the Search-Based Application (SBA) which offers a pragmatic way to
solve both well-known and emerging information management challenges as of now. Search engines
are the world's most familiar and widely deployed information access tool used by hundreds of
millions of people every day to locate information on the Web but few are aware they can now
also be used to provide precise multidimensional information access and analysis that is hard
to distinguish from current database applications yet endowed with the usability and massive
scalability of Web search. In this book we hope to introduce Search Based Applications to a
wider audience using real case studies to show how this flexible technology can be used to
intelligently aggregate large volumes of unstructured data (like Web pages) and structured data
(like database content) and to make that data available in a highly contextual quasi
real-time manner to a wide base of users for a varied range of purposes. We also hope to shed
light on the general convergences underway in search and database disciplines convergences
that make SBAs possible and which serve as harbingers of information management paradigms and
technologies to come. Table of Contents: Search Based Applications Evolving Business
Information Access Needs Origins and Histories Data Models and Storage Data Collection
Population Data Processing Data Retrieval Data Security Usability Performance Cost
Summary Evolutions and Convergences SBA Platforms SBA Uses and Preconditions Anatomy of a
Search Based Application Case Study: GEFCO Case Study: Urbanizer Case Study: National
Postal Agency Future Directions
