Thunderstone Blog: Customized Search Engine & Search Software

The Need for Flexible Data Management in the Healthcare Industry

Mon, 18 Mar 2019 09:52:41 -0400

Access to information is vital for any business or organization. For the healthcare industry, this access can have life-changing effects. Unfortunately for healthcare providers, researchers, and administrative staff, healthcare organizations don’t always have an effective search solution that allows health workers to efficiently access the information they need to complete crucial tasks or make important decisions.

How bad is the search problem in the healthcare industry? According to a TEDx Talk by Dr. Karl Kochendorfer, some healthcare professionals turn to Wikipedia for vital information instead of official sources because they have such a hard time finding what they need through their organization’s search setup. In addition, Kochendorfer cites that clinicians spend a third of their time simply looking for information.

It shouldn’t be hard for healthcare professionals to find the information they need, but there are many obstacles that stand in the way. High-performance search engine software and search appliances can be part of the solution.

Why Does the Healthcare Industry Need a Better Search Solution?

A massive amount of data without the proper search solution makes for an inefficient, ineffective setup for retrieving key information. Healthcare information takes many forms, all of which play an important role. These can include just about anything that can be documented and stored, such as:

Patient information
Procedural details
Patient care policies
Reference tools and medical literature
Forms
Benefits information

No matter what form these pieces of information take, a single health care organization can amass a massive amount of data that must be available to a wide range of staff. According to the Stanford Medicine 2017 Health Trends Report, “the sheer volume of health care data is growing at an astronomical rate: 153 exabytes (one exabyte = one billion gigabytes) were produced in 2013 and an estimated 2,314 exabytes will be produced in 2020.” Even the medical collection of one doctor can become massive, as the Jeghers Medical Index’s contained a collection of roughly five million physical pages amassed by Dr. Harold Jeghers.

Another issue is that these documents are typically stored in various repositories, such as:

Content management systems
Institutional document libraries
Team sites
Electronic medical record databases
Intranets
Email servers
File systems

As healthcare organizations continue to gather more information, they need to find a way to store new documents with pre-existing files and other data. Given the wide variety of medical subjects and types of files, information is typically stored in separate data silos.

While this system organizes different types of information into logical groupings, it can also create a situation where individuals need to search individual portals to find the right information they need. For example, a silo that contains insurance carrier documentation would likely not allow professionals to parse through notes from doctors and other providers. This scenario can make searches take longer than it should, and that’s if these users are even able to find the information they need. According to ComputerWeekly “it is estimated that knowledge workers spend more than twice as much time recreating content than they spend creating new content” because they can’t find existing files.

That means that healthcare organizations need to invest in high-performance search engine software or hardware that can not only handle hundreds of thousands of files, but also give users the ability to quickly and easily find what they need regardless of where the information is stored.

How Enterprise Search Technology Benefits Healthcare Organizations

Access to information is crucial. A high-performance enterprise search solution gives you the ability to search internal and external information across an entire organization. Enterprise search is designed to parse through a vast array of information found on multiple repositories. This allows different types of users within that organization, such as medical practitioners, administrative staff, and others, to look for and find the information they need.

However, the same user can have different needs depending on the specific search. For example, a doctor searching for drug facts during a patient visit will want different results than one looking up medical literature during lab work. To combat this, custom filtering can be set up so that certain types of results show up depending on the device used, such as a desktop in a research laboratory or an office laptop. In addition, custom filtering can be added to the searches themselves so that users can improve the relevancy of their search results both before and after their initial query.

While enterprise search software allows user to quickly and easily search for information, the technology behind it is far more complex. Enterprise search technology actively organizes information found in multiple repositories through metatagging, taxonomies, and categorization. This process creates a searchable index from various repositories. This enables the search software to logically find information for future queries so that users receive relevant information both quickly and efficiently.

Part of the reason enterprise search software makes it easier for users to find what they need is the types of searches it allows them to do. A customizable thesaurus feature allows organizations to improve the effectiveness of terminology that is more common to their industry. This can help improve the relevance of results by tying in generalities, associated phrases, acronyms, spelling variations, or other appropriate word associations. For the healthcare industry, this can help clear up issues when professionals search for a brand name drug or a generic drug, procedure names, medical abbreviations, or any other healthcare-specific terminology.

Enterprise search can also improve the effectiveness of searches involving statistics or data ranges. If a healthcare professional had a specific question or needed to find a certain data point, enterprise search would be able to parse through relevant literature and studies to yield appropriate results.

Another issue is that some information should only be accessible to certain users. Whether it’s due to HIPAA, meaningful use, or any other reason, certain documents should only be findable by certain individuals. HIPAA in particular requires a search solution that protects patient record from the wrong people. For example, even a search snippet can accidentally reveal patient names, so it’s important to invest in a solution that can anonymize these snippets and keep files accessible only by approved users. Enterprise search can be designed to give and remove access to certain repositories to different classes of users, whether it’s an admin level user or a member of the public.

How Thunderstone Solves Search Issues for Healthcare Organizations

Of course, the success of an enterprise search solution is only as good as the technology is uses. Thunderstone offers a suite of search solutions It is the only search engine software available with the fully integrated structure of an SQL relational database (RDBMS) that intelligently queries and manages databases containing:

Natural language text
Standard data types
Geographic information
Images
Video
Audio
Other payload data

In addition, Thunderstone offers search engine software solutions that can handle databases with tens of millions of large records and even hundreds of millions of records and can store and search text documents of unlimited size within standard database tables.

Another issue is that medical documents can contain specific language not found in typical files. Thunderstone search solutions have an English language vocabulary of up to 250,000 word and phrase concept associations for natural language queries, as well as excellent proximity control, fuzzy searches, true regular expression matching and written numerical value searches for even more refined, accurate searches.

In short, Thunderstone enterprise search technology gives healthcare organization the power to handle massive amounts of data and the flexibility to manage their needs. If you’re in need of a search solution that allows gives your organization the ability to access your data when your users need it, request a demo today to test our technology for yourself or contact us to talk to a Thunderstone expert and your organization’s search needs.

The Benefits of a Custom Search Engine Tool

Wed, 07 Oct 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Not all websites search needs are the same. A custom solution may be needed to handle your searching needs. Thunderstone's TEXIS can provide you with a full text search engine that will give you the power you need to handle your internal searches.

What Exactly is TEXIS?

TEXIS is a fully-integrated full text search engine. That makes TEXIS a flexible option that works with numerous integrated applications, including:

message profiling and handling
image library management
help-desk support
online news retrieval
business intelligence
research libraries
litigation support
Internet retail operations

TEXIS is powerful search engine option that can handle 10,000 records and more with an English language vocabulary of 250,000 words, plus phrase concept associations for natural language queries. In fact, TEXIS is the core technology for our other products, as it encompasses database and search engine capabilities.

What Makes it Different from Other Search Engines?

The key for TEXIS is versatility and customization. TEXIS isn't limited to website or fileserver searches; it can be tailored to do even more, giving you an option that be customized to be as powerful as you need it to be. TEXIS is the only search engine with a Structured Query Language configuration. This provides you with added benefits and advantages when it comes to complicated search requirements.

Fully-Integrated Full Text Search Engines from Thunderstone

Some of our customers use TEXIS as a search engine, others need it as an e-commerce system. Our TEXIS technology can be customized to fit your needs, so don't be afraid to tell us what you need and we'll be happy to work with you.Contact us online or give us a call at 216-820-2200 for more information on how TEXIS from Thunderstone can benefit you.

Texis Overview

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Executive Summary:

TEXIS is the only fully integrated SQL RDBMS optimized for full-text search.
TEXIS has high-performance ability to intelligently query and manage databases containing natural language text, numeric values, standard data types, geographic information, images, video, audio and other payload data.
TEXIS powers real-time applications with zero-latency data insertion, providing immediate search availability of key data without waiting for scheduled index updates.
TEXIS efficiently sorts and groups search results by any field(s) in the data. It can quickly sort tens of thousands of hits or more.
TEXIS, the innovative development platform behind Thunderstone's entire line of enterprise search products, lets users and developers incorporate their own unique knowledge and expertise into customized search solutions that easily integrate with other applications.

What makes Texis different from other search engines and databases?

Thunderstone's Texis is the only search engine developed from the ground up as a fully integrated SQL RDBMS optimized for full-text search, and it's the only relational database that can store and search text documents of unlimited size within standard database tables.

Used by hundreds of thousands of database application developers around the world, Structured Query Language provides many advantages for satisfying complicated search requirements. SQL also holds great promise as a reliable, well-defined path for implementing unanticipated new search functionality in the future. All other search engines offer a much narrower range of possibilities based on proprietary interfaces.

While typical search engines do a nice job of searching unstructured text and traditional databases have an impressive ability to handle queries on fielded or structured data, text searching and relational database management each rely upon radically different paradigms for organizing and retrieving information. They both developed and matured over decades as completely separate technologies, and they don't “marry” easily.

Thunderstone is the only company that has accomplished the true marriage of a full-text search engine and a powerful SQL relational database in a single platform. Addressing this challenge, the simultaneous searching of structured and unstructured data, remains one of Thunderstone's core competencies.

Deep in the heart of the Texis RDBMS resides Thunderstone's Metamorph, a concept-based natural language search engine utilizing advanced lexical set logic.

Metamorph has often been classified as a form of Artificial Intelligence, since its functions fall into the categories of knowledge acquisition, natural language processing and intelligent text retrieval. The software attempts in its own way to understand your search queries, to represent its understanding to the data in the files and to come up with relevant responses as retrieved portions of full-text information which best correspond to your submitted queries.

Metamorph's starting vocabulary has 250,000+ word connections, constructed in a dense web of associations and equivalences. Search parameters can be adjusted to dynamically dictate surface and deep inference. The program's responses can be controlled so that they are direct or abstract in relation to user queries. Proximity of concept can be fine tuned so as to qualify degree of relevance, providing matches which are sometimes concrete, sometimes abstract, as desired.

Metamorph allows for editing word sets. This means that you may select which associations you would like in connection to any search. You can create your own concept sets permanently for future use. You can fine tune the search to use associations of only a certain part of speech. You can enter all known spelling variations of any particular search word in the same way. You can generally customize the program to include your own nomenclature and vocabulary, making it increasingly intelligent the longer it is in use. When you want to control exactly what associations are made with any or all of the words or expressions in your searches, you can do so by editing the equivalence set associated with any word already known by the Equivalence File or by creating associations for a new or created word not yet known.

You can call up the ApproXimate Pattern Matcher (XPM) and tell it to look for a certain percentage of proximity to an entered string, finding misspelled names and typos. You can also look for numeric quantities entered as text, thanks to the Numeric Pattern Matcher (NPM) which recognizes that “four score and seven” is the same amount as “87.”

Metamorph allows users to search for intersections of sets of lexical items, while also performing prefix and suffix morpheme processing. Users can specify, right in their queries, the delimiters of choice: i.e., they can look for lexical intersections within a sentence, a paragraph, a page, a designated amount of text or some other defined textual unit such as a memo.

Texis, with Metamorph inside it, provides a modular set of tools to attack the formidable problem of how to get at and deal with a large volume of information when you don't really know precisely what you need or where to find it. Thunderstone's Texis gives you the power, speed and flexibility to rapidly implement a customized search solution that will accomplish your data access/retrieval objectives in the most dynamic, efficient and pragmatic way possible.

Thunderstone's Texis has a number of characteristics and built-in advantages that differentiate it from other search solutions:

A fully integrated SQL database management system (DBMS) that follows the relational database model, Texis is optimized for addressing the inclusion of unlimited quantities of narrative full text. It provides a method for managing and manipulating an organization's shared data, where intelligent text retrieval is harnessed as a qualifying action for selecting the desired information. Texis simultaneously provides full-text, fielded and Boolean searching of both structured and unstructured content.
Texis powers real-time applications with zero-latency data insertion, providing immediate search availability of new data without waiting for scheduled index updates. Unlike other search tools, Texis ensures that all information which has been added to any table can be searched immediately -- regardless of whether the table has been indexed and regardless of whether it has been suggested that an index be maintained on that table or not. Sequential table space scans and index-based scans are efficiently managed by Texis so that the database can always be searched in the most optimized manner with the most current information available to the user.
Texis enables searchers to sort and group query results by any field(s) in the data. And Texis can quickly sort tens of thousands of hits or more. Other search tools either bog down sorting more than a few hundred items or else their sorting features are much more limited than the capabilities of Texis.
Texis allows you to treat the concatenation of any number of text fields as a single “virtual field.” As a single field you can create an index on the fields, search the fields and perform any other operation allowable on a field.
Texis has high-performance ability to intelligently query and manage databases containing natural language text, numeric values, standard data types, geographic information, images, video, audio and other payload data. While Texis excels at purposeful manipulation of textual information, it also performs useful mathematical operations on your data. You can construct queries that combine calculated values with text search.
Texis lets you create an unlimited number of independent search collections -- each with their own unique data types, fields, attributes or parameters. It also empowers users to submit queries to multiple search engines and/or multiple collections and have the results displayed together or combined.
Texis gives developers prototype-friendly customization tools, extreme flexibility, rapid deployments and a feature-rich API. It supports multiple Search User Interfaces that offer specially-defined views of query input and results for different audience types or even for each unique individual. Thunderstone's Texis imposes no user interface requirements. Texis Web Script (Vortex) maintains “neutrality” with regard to whatever HTML markup (or JavaScript or other user interface technology) is employed for the user results presentation.

Which enterprise search applications require the robustness and flexibility of Texis?

Texis is the premier solution when large-scale, mission-critical and/or complex information retrieval challenges call for full-text searching tightly integrated with traditional structured database querying. Businesses, governments, NGOs and educational institutions use Texis in a wide range of applications such as online catalogs, auctions, classifieds, automated categorization, litigation support, intelligence collection/analysis, risk assessment, quality control, CRM, knowledge discovery, document and multimedia management, internet publishing, vertical portals, real-time message handling, web searching and many others.

Thunderstone's Texis provides the ideal development platform for rapidly deployable, custom-designed applications that require both unstructured and structured types of searching:

Online catalogs contain unstructured text (product name, description, etc.) and structured content (style/size, price, in-stock availability, etc.) Users expect the ability to search by item description, to navigate by price range or to do both in combination.
Knowledge management systems demand very efficient and secure enterprise-wide information retrieval across multiple repositories that serve different types of users, who all want dynamic, context-sensitive views of defined content (structured data) with the ability to refine results through full-text searching (unstructured data).
A Thunderstone solution provider customer has deployed Texis in a "brute force" full-text search scenario for its DoD Intelligence Community customer, using Thunderstone's Texis to search the contents of a massive Oracle database in a counter-terrorism effort. Texis is being used as an adjunct to Oracle full-text search because of its ability to scale while still providing superior performance in both rate of ingestion as well as search. Thunderstone's Texis enables this customer to search across a 20 terabyte index, ingesting 70-80 million new records per hour and returning typical search results in < 10 seconds.
A Fortune 20 customer is using Thunderstone's Texis as the search platform for what they describe as the "single largest knowledge management system currently deployed at any corporation in the world." The application encompasses knowledge, people and processes, and it is used globally within the organization to access more than 30 terabytes of data. Users access the application 20+ million times per day, retrieving and sharing information from across the global enterprise. The application is the most-used corporate I.T. resource after e-mail.

Thunderstone's Texis lets users and developers incorporate their own unique knowledge and expertise into customized search solutions that easily integrate with other applications. For additional information call +1 216 820 2200 or visit us online at http://www.thunderstone.com.

Texis' Metamorph Compound Index

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

The METAMORPH and METAMORPH INVERTED indexes in Texis are used to improve the performance of text searches using full-text queries with LIKE, LIKEP, and the rest of the LIKE family. Often the query involves other values, which are used to either sort the results, or further restrict the results returned.

One example is in the Webinator application, which provides the option to sort the results by date. Historically, the way to improve the performance of the ORDER BY was to use an INVERTED INDEX. If you also wanted to do date range restriction, then you could add a regular INDEX as well.

The Metamorph compound index will provide better performance than the three indexes since all the data is available from a single index, and also requires less maintenance. For the query:

SELECT Url FROM html
WHERE Title\Description\Keywords\Meta\Body LIKE $query
AND Visited BETWEEN $first AND $last
ORDER BY Visited DESC;

You could create the index as:

CREATE METAMORPH INVERTED INDEX xhtmlbodv ON HTML(Title\Description\Keywords\Meta\Body, Visited);

Which is the CREATE INDEX statement you will find in the Webinator dowalk script.

If there are several fields that you might use in the query or ORDER BY, then you can specify all of them as additional fields. The order of the fields does not matter, and the engine may use any combination of them. If in Webinator you also wanted to allow searches and sorts based on the Depth field, you could add Depth to the index:

CREATE METAMORPH INVERTED INDEX xhtmlbodvd ON HTML(Title\Description\Keywords\Meta\Body, Visited, Depth);

Then, with the ability of Vortex to ignore parts of the query you could write a query:

That will allow efficient searching and ordering on any combination of Visited and Depth, as long as a query is specified for the LIKE.

The compound index can also be used for GROUP BY or other queries that can fully rely on the index data, e.g.:

SELECT Depth, count(*) from html
WHERE Title\Description\Keywords\Meta\Body LIKE $query
GROUP BY Depth;

Key facts

In a full-text index (any of the variations of METAMORPH INDEX) the first field specified must be the full-text field, and will be indexed accordingly.
The first field may be a virtual field, if you want to search across multiple database fields. In the above example we would search the Title, Description, Keywords, Meta and Body fields as if they were a single field.
The full-text index will only be used if the full-text field is being queried with a full-text query. In the above example, if there was no LIKE clause, or it was dropped by Vortex because it matches $null, then the METAMORPH INDEX would not be used.
The additional fields beyond the full-text field should be small, fixed size fields, most commonly dates and numbers.
Using too many additional fields can negate the performance benefits of having the index. Care should be taken to ensure that only those fields actually used in queries are represented in the index.
The total size of the additional fields should be small relative to the size of the record, and should not exceed a few hundred bytes per record.
The total size of additional indexed data (number or rows multiplied by size per row) should be no larger than 25% of physical memory on the server.
If you specify a VARCHAR(N) field as an additional field, you will get a warning message "Variable size warning". The index will still be created, and N bytes of the field will be indexed (where N is from the declaration of the field) for each row. If N is large, this will bloat the index, reducing performance.
Updating fixed size fields, including the additional fields can be done without causing the index to go out of date and needing to be updated. Updating the full-text field, or any variable sized field (e.g. VARCHAR, BLOB, INDIRECT) will still cause the index to require an update.
Parts of the where clause that use the compound should be grouped together with parentheses for maximum efficiency.

February 2011 Newsletter

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

February 2011 - Archive

TEXIS VERSION 6 RELEASED

The newest version of Texis, Version 6, is now in full release. New features include:

More intuitive searches, including Unicode support and accent insensitive searches.
Improved XML/XSLT support, including a new API for building XML based applications more easily.
HTTP/1.1 support including gzip compression to reduce crawl times and bandwidth utilization.
Enhanced options for showing search results, including multiple snippets and highlighting using CSS styles.
Many more... See a full list of Version 6 features here.

Call us today at 216-820-2200 to find out how the latest version of Texis can help you.

NEW PRODUCT SURVEY

Thunderstone Software is currently working on a new web-based email product. We'd like to hear about what you might be looking for in an email solution, from search to archiving to contact management and beyond. Please take a minute to fill out our brief survey and share your thoughts. Thanks!

TECH TIP: MULTICOLOR QUERY HIGHLIGHTING

One of the many new features of Texis 6 is styling matches when generating an abstract. Each term in the query can be highlighted in a different style (color, font, etc).

Search results for Historic airport

... On average, the airport will see one Xtra Airways flight per day. References Historic Wendover Airfield FAA Airport Master Record for ENV (Form 5010 PDF) External links Resources ...

This can be especially helpful when using a thesaurus or equivs, as it will help users realize which search terms the hits came from.

Search results for location destination

A large portion of the airport's commercial airline service occurs during the winter and spring months, as the area is a popular tourist destination and seasonal home for snowbirds ...

Highlighting can be done differently with 3 <fmt> flags:

%mI - generates CSS code in an inlinestyle attribute at every hit. The highlighting will then not be depend on any external resources.
- <fmt "%mIH" $query $text> gives:
 ... average, the airport will see ...
%mC - places unique cssclasses on each search hit. This allows you to apply your own customization by defining the class yourself.
- <fmt "%mCH" $query $text> gives:
 ... average, the airport will see ...
%mb - the previously existing method that bolds the matches is still supported.
- <fmt "%mbH" $query $text> gives:
 ... average, the airport will see ...

You can also highlight the query with itself to provide a legend of the highlighting styles as the "search results for" above: <fmt "%mIH" $query $query>

Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome. Send your email to .

Thunderstone Releases Texis Version 6

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

CLEVELAND, OH — The leading development environment for full-text database search applications just got even better -- Texis Version 6 is here.

New features available in Texis 6 include:

More intuitive searches, including Unicode support and accent-insensitive queries:
This improves non-English searches; e.g. "cœur" will also match "coeur", "resume" will match "resumé".
Improved XML/XSLT support, including a new API for building XML based applications more easily.
HTTP/1.1 support including gzip compression to reduce crawl times and bandwidth utilization:
Reduces load on targeted servers, and potentially allows access to more content.
Enhanced options for showing search results, including multiple snippets and styled highlighting:
Shows more query-relevant text in results, and allows full customization of query term presentation.
And much more: see the full list of new features here.

For almost 30 years Thunderstone Software has been dedicated to providing the best search solutions possible to government, corporate, and non-profit customers, with exceptional service and devotion to finding the right solution for the customer.

For further information call 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com or email

November 2009 Newsletter

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500

November 2009 - Archive

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

"November had come; the crops were in, and barn, buttery, and bin were overflowing with the harvest that rewarded the summer's hard work. The big kitchen was a jolly place just now, for in the great fireplace roared a cheerful fire; on the walls hung garlands of dried apples, onions, and corn; up aloft from the beams shone crook-necked squashes, juicy hams, and dried venison – for in those days deer still haunted the deep forests, and hunters flourished. Savory smells were in the air; on the crane hung steaming kettles, and down among the red embers copper saucepans simmered, all suggestive of some approaching feast."

From An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving
November, 1881. By Louisa May Alcott

INTRODUCING THUNDERSTONE'S TEXIS CATALOG SOLUTION
(OUR NEW E-COMMERCE SEARCH ENGINE)

Thunderstone's Texis technology has a long tradition of hard-to-match success in efficiently handling the search requirements for very high-volume eCommerce applications such as real-time online auctions, large-scale retail websites and many others.

Now organizations of all sizes can put this same powerful capability to work on your own B2B/B2C shopping sites, on your own web-based catalogs, etc.

The Texis Catalog Solution offers an amazing value proposition, and it comes available in your choice of:

downloadable software with a one-time, perpetual license;
custom-configured Parametric Search Appliance with a one-time, perpetual license; or
a hosted service (SaaS) – provided by Thunderstone for an affordable monthly rate.

You can arrange to see the Texis Catalog Solution "in action" by scheduling a free demo that employs your own unstructured and structured product data.

Please contact Thunderstone's Fred Harmon at or call +1 216 820 2200 if you would like more information.

CUSTOMER QUOTE OF THE MONTH

"Thank you so much for your prompt and amazing customer service. We really enjoy working with you guys, especially because we get to interact with real people at your company rather than dealing with random customer service folks overseas."

H.B Vess

TECH TIP: USING SYNONYMS IN YOUR SEARCH

Thunderstone search products have the ability to use a thesaurus when searching to match alternate words with the same meaning. There are two types of sources for synonyms:

built-in – There's a built-in English thesaurus for matching normal words and synonyms.

custom – You can use your own custom thesaurus. This can be useful for things that aren't necessarily really synonyms but you want to treat them as such – acronyms that get expanded out, product name changes, etc. Please see your product's documentation for details on setting this up.

The custom thesaurus can be used instead of or in addition to the built-in thesaurus. The profile's "Synonyms" search setting affects how synonyms are used.

Possible values are:

Disabled (default) – no synonym processing is allowed.

Phrase Recognition only – synonyms are not used, but the thesaurus is used to recognize phrases. If someone searches for state of the art searches, it will recognize 'state of the art' as a phrase and search for "state of the art" searches and not match a page about the current state of searching for art treasures.

Phrases & Allow Synonyms – recognizes phrases, as above, and allows uses to turn on synonym processing for a query word by adding ~ (a tilde) to the beginning. Searching for New York ~bridge would match a page about a New York underpass.

Phrases & Use synonyms by default – phrase recognition and synonym processing is turned on by default, the ~ disables it. Searching for New York bridge would match the underpass article, but New York ~bridge would not.

Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome. Send your email to

June 2009 Newsletter

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

June 2009 - Archive

HAPPENINGS

THUNDERSTONE ADDS MORE RESELLERS.
We welcome the following organizations to our growing Thunderstone Channel Partner Program:

(For Texis, Search Appliances and Webinator in the U.S.A. and Canada)
Alliance Technology Group, LLC
+1 410 712 0270
http://www.alliance-it.com

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY: THUNDERSTONE'S TEXIS POWERS NATIVE AMERICAN MIXED-LANGUAGE SEARCHING ON A HERITAGE EDUCATION SITE

The Challenge:

How do you create an online learning resource with search capabilities that satisfy the special requirements of students, teachers and tribal leaders in today's Native American communities?

Kids on the reservations often speak in a manner that combines their traditional native language and English. They want a website that allows them to search for desired information in the same way.

Educators need innovative, practical tools that can help students to learn more about their native languages, history and culture. They must teach nearly forgotten subjects and transmit cherished values.

People with the responsibilities of leadership in Native American tribes have a dislike for anything that threatens their unique heritage. They fight against the corrosive influences of rampant commercialism.

The Solution:

The Native American Cultural and Historical Institute (NAI) and Mnemotrix Systems, Inc. created a Heritage Education online database with sophisticated User Group features and Concept Search capabilities powered by Thunderstone's TEXIS.

Users of the Intelligent Archive Search tool at NativeAmericanInstitute.org can enter 'mix-and-match' queries that combine English with words from the Seminole, Miccosukee, Creek, Muskogee, Cherokee, Apache, Lakota, Sioux, Yurok and other Native American languages.

The customizable thesaurus in TEXIS takes advantage of vocabularies developed by Native American speakers working closely with the tribal communities. As more people use this search application's thesaurus and continue to add to it, it becomes increasingly smarter.

TEXIS allows NAI to index only targeted content into a fully searchable database optimized for rapidly accessing and retrieving both structured data and unstructured information. TEXIS will enable online users to very quickly find text documents, maps, images, audio recordings, photographs and related educational materials with a high degree of relevance to authentic Native American knowledge, achievements, beliefs and perspectives.

Tendencies within public school systems on the reservations often end up taking Native American kids away from who they are, forcing students to choose between educational attainment and their tribal community roots. In response, the Native American Cultural and Historical Institute (NAI) developed NativeAmericanInstitute.org — a Heritage Education teaching resource for tribal educators, students and researchers. This web-based database provides access to an expanding quantity of archived information via Thunderstone's TEXIS search technology.

Click here to read more online.

Click here for a PDF of the NAI case study.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Development work continues on 2009 Thunderstone Software releases of TEXIS (Version 6,) Webinator (Version 6) and the new Texis Catalog product (eCommerce search engine for online catalogs.)

Looking ahead, you can also expect additional enhancements to the recently-released Version 7 software for Thunderstone Search Appliances and Thunderstone Parametric Search Appliances.

CUSTOMER QUOTE OF THE MONTH

"You guys are fantastic. I can't think of any vendor that's been as responsive and accommodating. I really appreciate it!"

Gene Quinn
Web Services Manager
State of Georgia Department of Corrections
http://www.dcor.state.ga.us/

TECH TIPS: USING THE DISK SPACE VIEWER ON YOUR THUNDERSTONE APPLIANCE

Disk space is rarely an issue on Thunderstone Search Appliances, due to the fact that the Appliance only stores the plaintext representation of content (so, a 5Mb PDF might only contain 10k of plaintext.) Still, it can be nice to keep tabs on space.

The Search Appliance can tell you how much disk space is used/free and exactly how much each individual profile is using.

After logging in, click the "Maintenance" link on the left.
Click the "Display Disk Space" link at the top.

The top section lists the free space, available space and total space for your Appliance.

The bottom section lists the size of each profile, sorted by disk space (largest profiles by on the top.) Clicking on the "Profile" column header will sort by profile instead.

If you click on a profile's path, it will show the sizes of the individual files for that profile. This can be helpful when troubleshooting with Support if a profile seems to be taking up more space than it should.

Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome. Send your email to

Customer Success Story: Using Texis To Enable Native American Mixed-language Searching On A Heritage Education Site

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

The Challenge:

How do you create an online learning resource with search capabilities that satisfy the special requirements of students, teachers and tribal leaders in today's Native American communities?

Kids on the reservations often speak in a manner that combines their traditional native language and English. They want a website that allows them to search for desired information in the same way.

Educators need innovative, practical tools that can help students to learn more about their native languages, history and culture. They must teach nearly forgotten subjects and transmit cherished values.

People with the responsibilities of leadership in Native American tribes have a dislike for anything that threatens their unique heritage. They fight against the corrosive influences of rampant commercialism.

The Solution:

Users of the Intelligent Archive Search tool at NativeAmericanInstitute.org can enter 'mix-and-match' queries that combine English with words from the Seminole, Miccosukee, Creek, Muskogee, Cherokee, Apache, Lakota, Sioux, Yurok and other Native American languages.

The customizable thesaurus in TEXIS takes advantage of vocabularies developed by Native American speakers working closely with the tribal communities. As more people use this search application's thesaurus and continue to add to it, it becomes increasingly smarter.

TEXIS allows NAI to index only targeted content into a fully searchable database optimized for rapidly accessing and retrieving both structured data and unstructured information. TEXIS will enable online users to very quickly find text documents, maps, images, audio recordings, photographs and related educational materials with a high degree of relevance to authentic Native American knowledge, achievements, beliefs and perspectives.

NAI is a non-profit activity jointly sponsored by the Florida-based Archaeological and Historical Conservancy, Inc. and by Texas-headquartered Mnemotrix Systems, Inc. — in association with participating Tribal Sponsors and with valuable ongoing input from professionals associated with the American Teachers Union.

Creating an Online Educational Resource Customized for Native American Students

Kathy Pincus, Chief Technology Officer at Mnemotrix Systems, Inc., related, “One of the issues with the Native American languages is that they're primarily verbal. It's a verbal tradition more than a written tradition. So, you have the current generation of Native Americans who cherish their language and their culture, which is, of course, disappearing just as many traditional things are disappearing in the modern age. And they want to educate their younger community in these things. The major tool that they have for remembering is the language itself.

“We took advantage of scholarship that's been done in a great number of different Native American languages. Then, with the customizable Thesaurus capability that TEXIS has to offer, we were able to combine the different common vocabularies of the languages. By using your own native language, you can actually do a query and find out what's been written about that subject — although what's been written is in English.

“It's a very unique situation in that we're trying to facilitate a cultural language which doesn't even have a body of written material — only verbal material. You have people who are remembering, in English, things that happened that were of the native culture. They're written down, but they're written in English. With this resource we've created for them, the students of native languages can go in and mix and match in English and their own native language to try and learn more about things that are culturally relevant.”

Kids on the reservations often speak in a manner that combines their traditional native language and English. Why shouldn't they have the ability to search for desired information in a manner that seems most natural to them?

Users of the Intelligent Archive Search at NativeAmericanInstituite.org can enter a query using words from the Seminole, Miccosukee, Creek, Muskogee, Cherokee, Apache, Lakota, Sioux, Yurok, and other Native American languages.

For example, if you enter the query hiye food (“hiye” is a Lakota Sioux word for “hot,”) it conjoins the interface for “hiye” with all known thesaurus equivalencies for “food.” The returned results will include items such as: “Native American recipes for soups, breads and hot sauces,” and “Native American Lore” — The White Buffalo Woman — where the following passage occurs: She filled a buffalo paunch with cold water and dropped a red-hot stone into it. “This way you shall cook the corn and the meat,” she told them. It's a smart search.

The Native Language Support page at NativeAmericanInstitute.org identifies some sources used to develop the lexical content for the site's searchable archives. When users click on any of the links for the listed source materials, this takes them to a Learning Center where they can learn to pronounce the letters of the words and to verify their sounds and definitions.

Kathy Pincus thinks other competitors in today's enterprise search marketplace do not provide the depth and breadth of 'rich language' capabilities available from Thunderstone's TEXIS.

She said, “The Native American community is a perfect example of a user group. How does a user group work, and how does it evolve? It evolves through its language. And, so, the ability to create a way to deal with the language of a group is a very powerful capability.

“What we have in this particular case is a Native American user group thesaurus language. It's been developed, and it can be added to. The more that it's used — and you put that feedback loop back into this thesaurus — the smarter it becomes. And it starts to create, with this new millennium, a written mind that parallels the thesaurus user group's community. This is something that TEXIS is equipped to deal with that the other stuff out there is not equipped to deal with. It's part of its strength.

“And we're living now in a world of Web 2.0, which 'clicks' everybody away from richness into pre-programmed controlled associations. We've always been about wanting to expand the mind rather than to control the mind — so that you could make associations that were not otherwise possible.

“The ability to do what we did with the Native American community is something that we could do only with TEXIS. It's not something that I would even try to take on without the robust set of tools that differentiate TEXIS from everything else in the market. Let me put it as clearly as possible. The other guys just don't have what Thunderstone has.”

If You Build It, Will They Use It? Addressing Serious Cultural Imperatives, and Overcoming Stakeholder Resistance

Creating innovative language/heritage learning resources for Native American educators requires a willingness to deal respectfully with local leaders and hard-core cultural conservatives who may have very valid concerns about the potential of negative influences that they often see intruding from outside their tribal communities.

Michael S. Pincus, President of Mnemotrix Systems, Inc. (and the husband of Kathy Pincus,) has a long history of intimate connections to the Native American community that began in the 1960s. Recently, when getting started on the NAI project, he mentioned to one his Native American friends that these are really exciting times. “Just imagine,” he said to her, “in the future a Native American could go into space and actually put their feet on the moon.” And she replied in a very interesting way, “We don't want to do that. We don't want that to happen to our Native American tribal members, because we are culturally and ethnically bound to the Earth. And our religion requires that we stay here.”

Mr. Pincus asked her how technology could potentially assist with tribal communities' educational efforts in ways consistent with their cherished values. She said, “Kids on the reservation shy away from using the Internet for anything except stuff that we don't want them to do. And, they don't like using English. We're trying to teach them their native languages.”

Pincus suggested, “What if I built you a specific application where selected websites are indexed into a database, and when kids use it — it only canvasses good information which is all relevant to your Native American issues and NOT relevant to other things? They can't use it for searching porno. They can't use it for searching for new sneakers. It's only predicated on the archives — which are all relevant to your cultural and other views.” She answered. “Now, that's great. That would really work. I'd love it. You'll get a lot of support from the different tribal councils.”

Thus began the Native American Cultural and Historical Institute (NAI) project. While students appreciated having the ability to formulate search queries that combine English with their Native languages, tribal leaders expressed concerns.

Michael S. Pincus explained, “If it [the concept-based rich language search tool] is too comprehensive — then they feel that you're taking advantage of them. You're assuming that you are an expert in their language, when, in fact, they consider themselves an expert in their language. So, what you run into is resistance. To this day the whole issue of educating and working with Native American communities remains difficult for a lot of people. If you don't really think things through and get comfortable with the whole scenario, people just won't use it. They find reasons to be annoyed by something or to criticize what you're doing within it.”

There are linguists in universities studying Native American language, and yet their studies remain somewhat disconnected from the speakers of these languages. From an academic perspective they pay no attention to the true culture and the whole Native American experience of English. Mr. Pincus said there's an appropriate expression seen throughout the literature dealing with Native American thinking and education: ‘It's like fish that don't know there's water.’

NativeAmericanInstitute.org had to choose between using vocabularies that come from linguists, which are full of complexities — or using vocabularies that are more 'ad hoc,' that are put there by native speakers for their own benefit. With the advice of Bob Carr (Executive Director of the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy, Inc.,) who is an anthropologist and archaeologist and an expert in Native American issues, the developers decided to stay within the context of 'ad hoc.' They used dynamic, slowly-growing dictionaries that have been put there by native speakers who are working with this community — as opposed to going with vocabularies from heavyweight academics who have very little connection to Native Americans' everyday world. Doing things this natural, more casual way enabled them to satisfy the sensitivities of cultural conservatives in the tribes, whose tacit approval makes teaching/working within the established educational system less complicated and less difficult.

Since the Native American Cultural and Historical Institute (NAI) began building this new online learning resource, 15-20 additional native language sets have become available to the development team. The Institute intends to expand its linguistic reach to cover nearly all the U.S. tribes. Many tribes, however, won't release the data — because they don't want non-native people speaking their languages.

Mr. Pincus remains optimistic. He said, “Unlike when we first started on this, we now have more Native American educators who are Native American — rather than Caucasian. And, working with them really is great. They're technically savvy. They're skilled at interfacing with a broader community of people. They have experience in working outside of the reservation. Yet, at the same time, they're skilled at handling reservation politics and stuff like that. So, there's an opportunity. It may now be a better place in which we can work effectively.”

Enhancing the Tribal Study Rooms at NativeAmericanInstitute.org with Additional Cultural and Historical Assets

Looking to the future, Michael S. Pincus said his current NAI activities include working with the Smithsonian Institution and other organizations to integrate maps, images, tape recordings, photographs and related educational materials that can also support and enhance tribal efforts to shake their communities loose from the negative effects of commercialism.

He noted, “Only certain tribes (many as a result of the casinos) are really doing fantastic. The Seminole tribe of South Florida owns the Hard Rock Cafes around the world. It's wild. And they're doing well. But a lot of the other tribes are still struggling. Seminole education in Florida is improving. They're turning out MBAs, lawyers, archeologists, historians, etc. But, generally, across the country, it still remains challenging. So, we're hoping this will help change that.”

The Native American Cultural and Historical Institute (NAI) (http://www.NativeAmericanInstitute.org) safeguards and enhances access to Native American culture, history and linguistic heritage. It applies advanced information management technologies and intelligent data retrieval techniques to provide a means by which the Native American community and indigenous peoples worldwide can preserve, research and dynamically study the cultural materials most important to them — while using their own Native Language systems combined with English.

Mnemotrix Systems, Inc. (http://www.mnemotrix.com) founded by Michael S. Pincus and Kathy Pincus in 1986, is an advanced technology developer and integrator that creates intelligent information applications such as NAI. The founders were also involved in the initial design specifications for some of the concept-based technology used in Texis.

Thunderstone Software to Showcase Its Enterprise Search Solutions at the 2009 AIIM International Exposition + Conference

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

PHILADELPHIA, PA — Thunderstone Software LLC, the R & D leader that pioneered simultaneous searching of both structured and unstructured data with its Texis relational database optimized for full-text search, will participate as an exhibitor (Booth 1045) during the 2009 AIIM International Exposition + Conference at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia.

WHO: Thunderstone Software's Fred Harmon (Channel Director & CSO) and Peter Thusat (Communication Director & CMO)
WHAT: AIIM International Exposition + Conference
WHEN: March 30 - April 2, 2009
WHERE: Pennsylvania Convention Center, 1101 Arch St, Philadelphia, PA 19107

AIIM exhibition visitors to Booth 1045 will have an opportunity to learn more about Thunderstone's enterprise search products, including:

Thunderstone's TEXIS
TEXIS, the innovative development platform behind Thunderstone's entire line of enterprise search products, is the only fully-integrated SQL RDBMS that intelligently queries and manages databases containing natural language text, standard data types, geographic information, images, video, audio and other payload data. Texis powers many diverse, real-time and integrated applications such as message profiling & handling, image library management, help-desk support, online news retrieval, business intelligence, research libraries, litigation support and eCommerce search engines for online catalogs.

The Thunderstone Parametric Search Appliance
The Parametric Search Appliance delivers the flexibility and power of TEXIS plus the ease of use of an appliance. It provides an easy way to create applications that combine full-text and structured data without programming. The Thunderstone Parametric Search Appliance enables standard SQL data retrieval and full-text keyword searches combined with a user-selected filter on up to 50 data fields.

The Webinator
The Webinator is a sophisticated Web indexing and retrieval package that allows Website administrators to create and customize a high-quality retrieval interface to collections of web documents no matter where they reside. The Webinator serves as an example of the type of applications that can be built around Thunderstone's Texis RDBMS and Web Script (Vortex.)

The Thunderstone Search Appliance
The Thunderstone Search Appliance is a plug-and-play device combining the simplicity of a hosted service with the security and performance of a local solution. The Appliance can handle more than 1,000 typical queries a minute — providing excellent value without adding administrative overhead. It delivers an easy-to-use feature set that especially appeals to the mission-focused requirements of non-technical executives and staff.

About AIIM
The AIIM International Exposition + Conference (http://www.http://www.aiimexpo.com) is the definitive industry gathering for information management professionals across industries and lines of business. It's produced and managed by Questex Media Group, Inc., a global, diversified business-to-business integrated media and information provider, headquartered in Newton, MA.

About Thunderstone
As a true industry pioneer -- providing some of the world's most powerful, flexible and scalable search solutions since 1981 -- Thunderstone Software LLC (http://www.thunderstone.com) has developed hard-to-match expertise in creating high-performance products with tremendous value for governments, NGOs, educational institutions and businesses of all sizes.

Sales contact: Fred Harmon

+1 216 820 2200 ext.105

Media contact: Peter Thusat

+1 216 820 2200 ext.118

How Ariba built an enterprise-wide Knowledge Management system based on Texis

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

A major challenge in today's organization is being able to have a search that is flexible enough to search across all the repositories in the appropriate manner to build an enterprise-wide knowledge management system. In this article we look at how Ariba, Inc. created an enterprise-wide knowledge management system using Thunderstone's Texis as a search solution.

Ariba offers the world's leading Spend Management software and services to a wide range of customers that include people from all industries. It provides a set of both CD-based and on-demand software, along with services related to sourcing products and commodities, negotiating contracts, buying against negotiated contracts and other key components of a complete, end-to-end Spend Management solution. Ariba helps organizations analyze, understand and manage their spending in order to rapidly achieve sustainable cost savings and to improve business process efficiency.

Why knowledge management?

Derek Matthews, Ariba's Lead Knowledge Architect, was initially focused on their Professional Services organization and their implementation methodology. He wanted to be able to drive consistent best practices into every implementation engagement. During every engagement they would learn things and want to capture the assets and templates that were the best practices for each phase of a project engagement with the customer.

According to Matthews, “A key piece of knowledge management is searching. Process-wise, the first thing you do when you've got an issue in front of you is that you search our knowledge base to discover if your issue has already been addressed. Is there already a best practice out there that addresses what you're trying to do, or is there a content item out there that is immediately leverageable for what you're wanting to do? If none of those are the case, then we do what we call research. Research means having to dig really deep into content items and collaboration, discussion forums and all this sort of thing. And eventually maybe you'll find your solution on page 75, paragraph 4 of some technical document in combination with some other user guide and whatever else. Then the idea is to build a solution, put that into our knowledge base and enable other users around the globe to find it when searching. Researching is more costly than searching. So, we want to push everything forward to that less-costly searching process.”

Native Power and Flexibility of Thunderstone's TEXIS,

Ariba initially licensed Thunderstone Texis due to the availability of integration code from their content management system vendor who supported Texis because of the attribute storage and search available in Texis. The integration code turned out to be inefficient and was sluggish for Ariba's end users when pushed beyond its design. Because Thunderstone provides the ability to completely customize everything from the Texis databases to Vortex scripts, Ariba's software engineers developed their own integration with the content management system. The result was greatly improved efficiency with several customized interfaces that enabled users of the company's various portals to search for content items containing full text and file attachments plus all the associated metadata needed for efficient filtering, security and results sorting. Over time, Ariba built their current knowledge base. With every engagement it became smoother and smoother and smoother, and they are able to have everyone, globally, following the same process. And then from Professional Services implementation methodology it started growing into Sales and Marketing material, and then into Customer Support -- the entire CRM environment, engineering, HR, and eventually every department in Ariba got on-board with their Knowledge Management platform, and now they're all big users of it (Ariba has around 2,000 employees in North America, Europe, Asia/Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East).

As Matthews explains, “We started rolling out enhancement wave after enhancement wave and have continued that to this day. One of the latest enhancements that we've rolled out has been federated searching capabilities, what Thunderstone calls the meta-searching. We actually have portlets that we use on various portals across our extranet that allow people to pull together incongruent content based on metasearches that they want to perform. It is possible now, within the last year, for an Ariba employee to do a search and be able to pull a service request from our CRM system, a defect from our engineering quality system, a marketing presentation from our content management system, as well as searching any number of other internal web sites that have been indexed. You can search over all of the sources through one integrated portlet that we built on top of Thunderstone Texis.

“Texis allows Ariba to index widely varying content into a platform that can be securely accessed by users from various portals for our customers, partners, suppliers, prospects and employees. We are able to use the search engine to present dynamic, context-sensitive views of content for users to browse with the ability to refine through full-text searching.”

Customized Search Engine for Knowledge Management

Thunderstone has always believed in providing tools to users, letting them add the intelligence and knowledge they have in their field to the core tools Thunderstone provides, enabling the creation of powerful applications that can give a competitive advantage. By providing a SQL based database that is optimized for full-text searching in combination with traditional database attributes Thunderstone enables customers to use their existing expertise in database application creation and efficiently extend it into the world of search. Another benefit Thunderstone provides is the Texis Web Script language, known as Vortex. This is designed to allow developers to quickly create applications using the Texis database by providing a simple but powerful syntax and library. Customers can take Thunderstone's applications and modify them to suit their needs easily, while at the same time allowing Thunderstone to create new applications for customers, usually in a matter of days.

Matthews continued, “From a knowledge management perspective we were excited to get involved with Thunderstone, because what they brought to us was a completely customizable interface. A lot of companies, when you talk about knowledge management, tend to believe there's one out-of-the-box solution you can install that's going to solve all your problems with no customization. But, that's not reality. What Thunderstone allowed us to do was to completely look at any and every requirement that we have. With Thunderstone Texis we get a platform that we can customize down to the most technical level.

“With many search engine solutions on the market you basically install their software, point it at a URL and say 'go index that data.' And that's fine. For some situations that's no problem. But in our case we need to be able to customize, even down to the database level. We need to be able to modify how this Texis database works. We need to make modifications to the Vortex scripts that go out and search for content so that they can make certain metadata changes based on certain conditions that might be present. Those Vortex scripts need to be able to combine text from within attached files together with the metadata describing that document in addition to the full text that might be within those files. For example, there will be categorization that's tied to those files. There will be filtering tags that are applied, as well as security tags that get applied.

“The last piece is critical. We need to be able to fully customize the interface to our search engine in a secure manner. If you're a customer accessing our search engine, we want to be able to allow you to search all of the content that we provide to every customer as well as the content that's provided to you specifically as a customer. Maybe it's a benchmark report that we want you to be able to see. But, at the same time, we don't want to allow you to search against a benchmark report for another customer. Security is very important. We're allowing you to search the content that you, depending on whatever attributes you have as a company, are able to see. If you bought a certain product, we may want you to be able to search content for that product, but we don't want you to get bogged down searching content for another product that you don't even own. It's useful both from a filtering for ease of use perspective as well as a security perspective -- both equally important aspects.

“Thunderstone's ability to customize based on those very, very specific requirements that we had made it a great choice, because at each level we are able to make it do exactly what we want it to do. With Thunderstone Texis you have the option of using it right out of the box, one size fits all, just install it and run. However, and this is what I think so many people don't realize out in the industry, Texis also enables a level of customization that lets you go down to the 'nth degree' depending on whatever your requirements are.”

“I am amazed at the whole design of the engine itself. It really is powerful. Thunderstone doesn't get enough credit, and I've never quite understood why. When it comes to customizing the database, customizing the indexing and how that works, and customizing the user interface -- those three things -- I have not seen any of Thunderstone's competitors demonstrate the ability to hit all three of those the way Thunderstone does and with the depth that Thunderstone does,” said Matthews.

Starting with a flexible and easily customized search solution from Thunderstone Software in one area of the business, Ariba has been able to deploy an enterprise-wide search based knowledge management system by extending it application by application, incorporating the specific knowledge from each part of the organization, all using the same core skill sets.

Change In Daylight Saving Rules

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:44:15 -0400

Are Thunderstone Software's products affected?

Texis and Webinator do not require any patches to accommodate the upcoming changes to daylight saving rules as they store dates in UTC, and use the configured timezone to output and import dates. Daylight saving tracking is a feature provided by the operating system and Texis will respect the OS configuration. However, your OS may need patching if it's not already properly configured to handle the new rules.

Thunderstone will be issuing patches for the Search Appliance on March 1 (possibly earlier). Use your appliance's "Maintenance->Check for updates" feature if you haven't configured it for automatic updates. Select the package called "timezone-1.0.0".

Are the dates in my database correct?

If you have used, or are using Texis on an unpatched OS, and you import or convert string dates whose string values lie between the old and new DST changeover dates (e.g. Sun Mar 11 02:00:00 2007 and Sun Apr 01 02:00:00 2007 local time for the US), for any year after 2006, then the imported value will be based on the prior rules, and will be output differently after the patch because the OS parsed it wrong. You will need to re-import/convert those dates after patching your OS.

For example the string "2007-03-20 16:30:00" (4:30pm on March 20, 2007) imported to a date field on an unpatched operating system configured for a US timezone will print as "2007-03-20 17:30:00" (5:30pm on March 20, 2007) after patching.

Updating your operating system

Unix and Linux

Your best bet would be to check with your OS distribution vendor for timezone or tzdata updates. Here are links to a few popular ones.
For Solaris see Sun Alert ID 102775.
For RedHat see knowledge base article 7909.
For SUSE see document 3853518.
For doit-your-selfers check out tzdata.tar.gz at ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/ for new timezone data. Be sure to link or copy your timezone file to /etc/localtime or whatever's appropriate for your system.

Microsoft Windows

Visit windowsupdate.com to download Update KB928388 in the Optional category. Note that this fix is NOT included in automatic updates. For full details from Microsoft visit http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007.mspx.

Testing compliance for Texis and Webinator

Note: The following tests assume a US timezone that used and will use the conventional DST rules. Some localities and other countries follow different rules.
The lines here may wrap to fit the page. Enter each command on one long line.

Open a shell or msdos window and cd to the Texis install directory. Then run (for Windows use "texis"¹ instead of "bin/texis" in the examples below)

bin/texis -h -d texis/testdb -s "select convert('2007-03-11 03:01:00','date')-convert('2007-03-11 01:59:00','date')"

This test compares one minute before and after the new transition time.
Unpatched you should get "3720". Patched you should get "120".

Then run

bin/texis -h -d texis/testdb -s "select convert('2007-04-01 03:01:00','date')-convert('2007-04-01 01:59:00','date')"

This test compares one minute before and after the old transition time.
Unpatched you should get "120". Patched you should get "3720".

¹Particularly old installations of Texis may not havetexis.exe in the installation directory but only in the webserver's CGI directory. In that case use the full path to texis.exe to run it.

Confirming updates on the Search Appliance

After installing the timezone-1.0.0 package via "Check For Updates" confirm the installation by going to "Maintenance->Manage Logs" and clicking on "messages". You should see something similar to the following, but with your machine name and timezone (note that the lines are in reverse chronological order).

Feb 27 14:12:58 host logger: timezone finished
Feb 27 14:12:58 host logger: patch ok
Feb 27 14:12:57 host logger: Your timezone is America/New_York
Feb 27 14:12:57 host logger: Installing updated timezone info
Feb 27 14:12:57 host logger: timezone-1.0.0-1
Feb 27 14:12:57 host logger: Preparing packages for installation...

If necessary you can adjust your timezone setting via "Maintenance->Webmin Interface->Change Time Zone".

Further questions

Please contact Thunderstone Support if you have questions.

Customer Spotlight: QVC Customers Find What They Need With Texis

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Most Americans know QVC by its shopping channel on television. QVC's web site, however, also is one of the most successful online retailers, bringing in a substantial portion of QVC's $4.4 billion of sales yearly.

Thunderstone's Texis software plays an important role at QVC in a variety of ways.

Unlike television sales, where each item is on sale for only a few minutes at a time, QVC's entire inventory is available all the time on its web site. The online database thus has hundreds of thousands of products, and requires a robust search engine to help users find the items that satisfy them.

QVC needed its search engine to do more than simply search, however. The company had many advanced requirements.

For example, its customers are price sensitive, so QVC wanted to enable them to select by price as well as by description. A user can enter "gold necklace" and "$100", and QVC's Texis system automatically finds products within +/- 25% of the user-entered price. QVC found Texis the best product for combining a numeric range query with a text search.

Texis's real-time functionality also is crucial to QVC.

We update our inventory in realtime to make sure sold-out products are not offered to the customer. This is especially important In high volume periods like 'Fashion Day' where certain colors and sizes sell out quickly and frequently. This is a key function Texis provides that no other search engine we've seen can do.
Frendy Glasser, QVC Director of Data Administration

In addition to serving search results, Texis powers the "drill-down" or catalog browsing features, which are based on product metadata. And when a user views the detailed description associated with an individual item, Texis serves up that content too.

Many other Texis features are in use. Products are ranked according to QVC's proprietary criteria. And results are retrieved from "partner" databases for products such as books, music, and sporting goods.

The Texis applications are used as well by QVC's order-entry representatives when customers call asking for a product. All in all, the Texis installation at QVC is handling millions of database queries daily. QVC runs Texis on IBM AIX hardware, with the "front end" user interface written in ASP running on Microsoft NT servers.

What's also important to us, besides the performance and advanced features, is the flexibility to change how we respond to queries as the business situation evolves. We like knowing that Texis can be programmed to respond to searches according to almost any logic we come up with. Before Texis, we had another search package that was a major product in the industry, but we were frustrated by programmability limitations, and by its proprietary interface. Texis, in additional to being a great search product, is easily customizable due to its industry-standard database features.

We also value Texis's consistency in response time regardless of volume, its scalability, and its availability. We rarely, and I mean rarely, have any downtime problems with the Thunderstone Texis engine.
Frendy Glasser, QVC Director of Data Administration

Thunderstone Attacks 'invisible Web' With First Javascript Link Crawler

Tue, 30 Jul 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Cleveland, Ohio, July 30, 2002 -- The industry's first search product to index JavaScript hyperlinks and JavaScript dynamic content was announced by Thunderstone Software. The new capability is bundled with Thunderstone's Texis search software, and is available immediately.

The need to index JavaScript links has become a serious challenge on the Internet. More and more web designers use JavaScript not only to add interactivity to web pages, but for basic site navigation as well. As JavaScript usage has become more mainstream, sites have grown increasingly dependent on JavaScript-enabled browsers. But since search engines cannot "see" JavaScript links, search-engine users are missing valuable content -- often without knowing it.

Neither the major web-search sites, nor specialized search products, currently collect JavaScript links for indexing. "JavaScript links are part of the 'invisible web' that most search engines miss," said John Turnbull, Thunderstone's general manager. "Making that information searchable may be especially important on corporate networks or portals."

Many organizations need to run large intra-net search engines, aggregating content from a variety of internal sources. "They may run an internal crawler and not even know they're missing all those pages linked by JavaScript." Turnbull said. "We've seen that occur, for example, at companies using Lotus's QuickPlace product, which creates collaboration sites navigable mainly by JavaScript links."

Thunderstone's support of JavaScript link indexing reinforces Texis as the most comprehensive and versatile search software on the market. Texis also provides a broad range of other data discovery and indexing techniques. That includes indexing 'deep' information such as database content and newswire feeds, or even results from other search engines, all of which may be continually changing.

Thunderstone is offering a free trial of the JavaScript link crawler through Oct. 30. The feature is included with Thunderstone's Webinator web-site indexing product. Anyone who administers a web site may download a full working copy via the link on Thunderstone's home page, at http://www.thunderstone.com/ .

ABOUT THUNDERSTONE
Thunderstone Software LLC is the premier provider of text-search technology integrated with SQL relational database functionality. Applications include publishing, catalogs, classified advertising, auctions, content management, and web-searching. Thunderstone is a 20-year-old company whose products are used on thousands of web sites worldwide. Major customers include eBay, QVC, About.com, ZDNet, HotJobs, and many others. For more information, visit http://www.thunderstone.com or call +1 216-820-2200.

Askme Corp. Acquires Thunderstone License

Thu, 30 May 2002 00:00:00 -0400

Cleveland, Ohio, May 30, 2002 -- Thunderstone Software announced that AskMe Corp. has acquired a perpetual license to integrate Thunderstone's Texis search software within AskMe's Employee Knowledge Network software solutions.

AskMe creates software that enables corporations to create and manage employee knowledge networks to deliver employee expertise, directly to other employees blocked on critical tasks, exactly when they need it. The Texis search engine within the AskMe Enterprise product helps users to find the expertise they need via sophisticated database searching.

Thunderstone's Texis software also powers the public AskMe expertise search engine. The original AskMe web site is one of the world's most popular expert advice websites for thousands of topics.

"Texis plays a crucial role within our products," said Digvijay Chauhan, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Askme. "The Texis relational structure is unique among search engines, and is key to effective integration with the AskMe SQL applications. We also take advantage of various Texis advanced search features such as fuzzy matching and natural language querying." Texis will be bundled with all AskMe Enterprise systems, said Chauhan.

"The AskMe enterprise solutions highlight Thunderstone's core competency," said John Turnbull, Thunderstone general manager. "Texis is designed with integration in mind. It is the only search engine to incorporate the full SQL data model. That makes it ideally suited to searching data within complex applications, especially those built on top of relational databases, or incorporating real-time updates."

ABOUT THUNDERSTONE
Thunderstone Software LLC is the premier provider of text-search technology integrated with relational database functionality. Applications of Thunderstone's system include publishing, catalogs, classified advertising, auctions, content management, and web-searching. Thunderstone is a 20-year-old company whose products are used on thousands of web sites worldwide. Web sites using the Thunderstone Texis software include eBay.com, About.com, and Corbis.com. For more information, visit http://www.thunderstone.com or call +1 216-820-2200.

ABOUT ASKME CORP.
AskMe builds software solutions that enable global 2000 companies to create and manage Employee Knowledge Networks. Employee Knowledge Networks are software systems that deliver employee expertise, directly to other employees blocked on critical tasks, exactly when they need it most. AskMe's solutions enable employees with business-critical problems to discover the best expertise within the organization, facilitate the exchange of that expertise, capture the outcome for re-use, dispatch the best practices to employees who need to know, and provide the tools to analyze the results to make the entire company more effective. Such blue-chip companies including Procter & Gamble, 3Com, and CNA have implemented the company's flagship product, AskMe Enterprise. Founded in 1999 by former Microsoft executives, AskMe is privately held with headquarters in Bellevue, Washington. (www.askmecorp.com)

Ebay Renews Commitment To Thunderstone Software

Thu, 28 Mar 2002 00:00:00 -0500

Cleveland, March 28, 2002 -- Thunderstone Software announced that its customer eBay has renewed its license for the Texis search engine software. Texis provides the text-search capabilities for the ebay.com service and other eBay Inc. companies.

Texis has been eBay's search engine since before eBay became a household name with its 1998 stock offering. In that time the Texis software has "scaled up" to handle more than 30 million searches a day for eBay, against an ever-changing database of millions of items for sale. eBay.com features that are "powered" by Texis include the "smart search" and "advanced search" pages.

Texis also provides the search and power-search function of eBay's subsidiary Half.com. Texis was the original search engine of Half.com, beginning with its founding in 1999 as an independent company, before its acquisition by eBay.

eBay and Half selected Texis as their search engines because of Texis's superior database-related capabilities. Texis is the only text-search software built on a structured query language (SQL) framework. This provides superior tools for programmers, as well as vastly better performance than the text-search features of other relational database products.

ABOUT THUNDERSTONE Thunderstone Software LLC provides high-performance solutions for text-searching in conjunction with relational database applications. Applications of this technology include publishing, catalogs, classified advertising, content management, and web-searching. Thunderstone is a 20-year-old company whose products are used on thousands of web sites worldwide.

For more information, visit http://www.thunderstone.com or contact Thunderstone Software on +1 216-820-2200.

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February 2011 - Archive

CONTENTS

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NEW PRODUCT SURVEY

TECH TIP: MULTICOLOR QUERY HIGHLIGHTING

Thunderstone Releases Texis Version 6

November 2009 Newsletter

November 2009 - Archive

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HAPPY THANKSGIVING

INTRODUCING THUNDERSTONE'S TEXIS CATALOG SOLUTION(OUR NEW E-COMMERCE SEARCH ENGINE)

CUSTOMER QUOTE OF THE MONTH

TECH TIP: USING SYNONYMS IN YOUR SEARCH

June 2009 Newsletter

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HAPPENINGS

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY: THUNDERSTONE'S TEXIS POWERS NATIVE AMERICAN MIXED-LANGUAGE SEARCHING ON A HERITAGE EDUCATION SITE

UPCOMING EVENTS

CUSTOMER QUOTE OF THE MONTH

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Customer Success Story: Using Texis To Enable Native American Mixed-language Searching On A Heritage Education Site

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If You Build It, Will They Use It? Addressing Serious Cultural Imperatives, and Overcoming Stakeholder Resistance

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Change In Daylight Saving Rules

Customer Spotlight: QVC Customers Find What They Need With Texis

Thunderstone Attacks 'invisible Web' With First Javascript Link Crawler

Askme Corp. Acquires Thunderstone License

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INTRODUCING THUNDERSTONE'S TEXIS CATALOG SOLUTION
(OUR NEW E-COMMERCE SEARCH ENGINE)