Automating Search Interfaces

[Pierre Morel]

Hello,

I would like to talk about the location of the person making the search versus the location of the product or service provider. If I search for a product and I want it now, I only want a list of provider in a distance applicable for my request. And if I go to Europe this summer and want to make reservation or search for activities occuring at that time, the 'where I am' specification change. If I have a secondary house and make request on the week-end, I want the restaurant in that region and not the one near my primary house. An identity profile should be include in the query and give the chance to the search engine to make a better choice in regard of my age, sex, etc...

Another part of the problem is a unique number identification and I am not sure if EAN or SIC is good for that purpose. How a search engine can parse a site or made a request for a product or service without a unique product number. A hotel room is a 'chambre' in french. If I search for a hotel room in Italy, I don't know the word for room in italian but if a room is a number, I can search for a room every where in the world. The query interface will be in my language and the service provider will build his database in his own language. The query page should change for every product. I have work around this idea for a time and came to the conclusion that a lightweight page creation and manipulation is need. The small tutorial that show how the parts fit together is related to a very premature search engine. The left pane show the products in a store but can be a list of products at a search engine site.

What is XML-Data versus DTD ? Maybe the solution is there and I don't see it.
I would like to know if every product on earth can have a number the same way that every book can be codified ?

Best regards to all

Pierre Morel 
pierlou at cam.org 
http://www.cam.org/~pierlou/prototype



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