A new multi-search engine for querying data through an Internet search service on CORBA

Search engines are important but generally far from ideal tools of the Worl d Wide Web (WWW). Many researchers therefore prefer to use meta-brokers to construct multi-search engines (MSE). However, these have no uniform progra mming interfaces, which makes tying them with other search engines difficul t. Moreover, for an application that needs a search service capability, que rying them is difficult. To reduce that difficulty, we propose in this paper an Internet search serv ice (ISS) based on common object request broker architecture (CORBA) that f ollows the style of common object service specification (COSS). We design a multi-search engine based on ISS, which we term Octopus. For a system deve loper, because of its uniformity of interface, Octopus easily ties with any search engine. Equally, for an application programmer, the ISS offers a cl ear interface for application programs to search for information or mine da ta from the Internet. We demonstrate our approach to designing multi-search engines through ISS by tying two search engine agents, Yahoo and Alta Vist a, with Octopus and show how CORBA clients query them. Programmers may use this interface to construct their search engine agents or query a search en gine agent in their applications. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.