Internet search technologies & XML

Abstract

Searching and retrieving the right information from the World-Wide Web (WWW) has always been considered of foremost importance and of considerable A.I. intensivity. Internet search technologies have been evolving over the years and will continue to do so as the WWW will continue to expand in size and increase in popularity. In a desperate attempt to restore order to the WWW after the chaos that has developed due to its heterogeneous, unstructured and uncensored nature, the eXtended Markup Language (XML) is being heralded as the successor to HTML. In this paper we investigate the evolution of Internet search technologies and present a possible and viable solution in a functional system we developed and which makes use of XML at its very core. We discuss the design issues involved as well as practical issues such as tendencies and tactics employed by some of the major players in this well-sought area.