ObjectSpot is a web-based federated search client plus middle-ware mediator for distributing queries and collecting results to digital libraries and learning object repositories that implement the Simple Query Interface (SQI).

The portlet passes the query terms to a mediator (using AJAX) which tries to connect to each of the active repositories asynchronously via SQI calls. The repository targets then return SOAP messages containing search results wrapped into RSS.
Before the mediator returns the results to the ObjectSpot portlet, it parses these results and computes a relevance rank using a precomputed inverse document frequencies. These rank scores are then utilized by the portlet to insert the new results at the appropriate rank position.

All the relevant information during this interaction is logged and is later on used to calculate access statistics and monitoring the quality of service of the repositories. This is crucial, since ObjectSpot’s performance relies on the quality of service of its underlying network nodes.

ObjectSpot is in early development. Please report any problems you encounter.

You can check out the latest version of ObjectSpot (an OpenACS module) at:
https://icamp.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/icamp/mediator-2/trunk

Posted by Robert Koblischke at October 10th, 2007 under Interoperability

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