SAN MATEO, Calif. — Inktomi Corp. introduced the fourth leg of a distributed Internet access strategy on Tuesday (June 15) by launching a "concept-induction"-based Directory Engine to augment its current Search Engine and Shopping Engine Web-site analysis products and its TrafficServer caching environment. As with its three existing products, Inktomi will aim the directory product at a strict OEM and portal-development customer base, providing customers with access to a 1.3 million-entry directory database.
Paul Gauthier, chief technical officer at Inktomi (San Mateo, Calif.), said that human developers were used to set up category taxonomies and statistics modeling, under the goal of making directory linkages relevant to a search at hand, and high-quality in terms of responding to human inference patterns. The latter steps of creating entries for the broad directory categories were automated, using several proprietary Inktomi concepts of concept induction to find the most appropriate directory links.
While Inktomi does not like to dredge up images of using much-maligned artificial intelligence methods, the induction methods are weighted to avoid assigning too much relevance to Web sites that like to load up their portals with irrelevant or repetitive links.
The tools also have been designed to look for uncertainties in user requests. Gauthier used the example of a search for "chip directories," which prompted the database to query whether the user means semiconductors or snack foods.
Implementation of the concept-induction methods requires use of supercomputer-based models, as well as banks of distributed Web servers in Inktomi's operations center to actually search directories based on the models. The engine will be delivered with a Directory Management System that allows portal and server managers to customize the directory engines, add their own entries and subcategories, and share the new categories with Inktomi or other customers, if desired. The management tools use a Java drag-and-drop set of tools, so database additions never need programming interfaces, even for high-level languages like C and C++.
Directory documentation makes use of the Inktomi Search Engine for "crawling" new Web sites, and Gauthier said he expects additional links for customers among the search, shopping and directory tools. The company will create special bundles of combined tools, and special features in one environment can be invoked from another environment — for example, a shopping engine that launches a secure-transaction applet can be invoked from the directory engine if appropriate.
