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Updated 17 AUG 1998 Security and Privacy Notice | URL:/about/open.html

Open Architecture

• ASF components can be substituted to adapt to particular situations and to evolve over the years
• Substitutions of commercial as well as academic and other freeware providers are strongly encouraged
• Scaleable, distributed search
  ASF is designed to support intelligent agents to query large collections of mixed-mode data (e.g., text, geospatial metadata, and bibliographic references)
• Global Information Locator Service (GILS)
  • Full-featured, powerful search protocol
  • Record-level metadata object to describe a document, data set, image, or other entity
  • Interoperability with existing information communities, e.g., libraries, information services, publishers, governments
• WhoIs++
  • Whois++ protocol supports automated exchange of summary information (e.g., "centroids")
  • ASF extends Whois++ for multiple hierarchies with a Fallback per information community
• XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
  Locator records follow XML specification from the World Wide Web Consortium
• Search Engines
  • Freeware search engines included:
    • Isearch from Center for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR)
    • Zebra from IndexData
  • Gateways for commercial search engines:
    • Alta Vista
    • Fulcrum Search Server
    • Sovereign Hill Inquery
• Search API
  • API (Application Programming Interface) between a server application and a search engine or data base
  • Facilitates integration of different protocols (e.g. HTTP, Z39.50, LDAP)
• Platform
  • Developed on Linux with freely distributable Apache HTTP server
  • Apache modules gateway between stateless HTTP requests and Z39.50 sessions
  • CGI applications for other HTTP servers
  • ASF management tools use Web browser