Additionally, the Boolean commands and complicated syntax in advanced searches left us longing for a friendlier interface. To its credit, AltaVista displayed useful tips on the query interface page, and we liked its ability to display results in flow chart form.

After specifying rules for how the crawler should behave (specifying domains and URLs the crawler should include or exclude), we launched the crawler and immediately performed searches. In addition to converting and indexing a variety of document formats, SIX-97 successfully handled framed and nonframed Web pages. Earlier versions of AltaVista couldn't handle framed pages.

AltaVista also doesn't support stemming. However, through a feature called LiveTopics, SIX-97 let us refine our searches by dynamically suggesting topics and alternative words that are related to the search words.

Verity IntelliServ 1.0
IntelliServ is a first-generation implementation of push technology for periodically finding information on a Web site. Two other products, Maxum's Phantom and Netscape's Compass Server, also let us set up ongoing search operations with e-mail notification of successive search results. But I ntelliServ gave us more accurate matches along with a clearer, more usable presentation of search results. IntelliServ didn't offer a natural-langu age interface but, like Ultraseek Server, it did give us stemming, proximity searching and case-sensitive results. Unfortunately, its search engine produced more false matches than Ultraseek Server and SIX-97. DB/Text Intranet Spider's search engine performed as accurately as IntelliServ's but lacked the push technology Verity programmed into IntelliServ.

Verity has taken a distinct approach to Web searching with IntelliServ. On our lab intranet, it pushed information directly to us--we didn't have to search for it. Our Web site became a knowledge base, and our e-mail inbox and browser start page gave us our search results. IntelliServ kept us informed when new or changed information in areas of interest appeared on the intranet. However, false matches that appeared in our inbox or on our start page were more annoying than those resulting from ad hoc queries.

IntelliServ is a great tool for people who repeatedly search their intranet with the same query. We suggest that Verity add a layer of artificia l intelligence to elevate the relevancy of IntelliServ's search results.

IntelliServ's indexer successfully processed the contents of the Adobe PDF, Microsoft Office (Excel and Word for Windows) and other files at our test site. It even indexed an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) data source.

IntelliServ's search engine let us query specific data sources for keywords. Refining a search was a matter of clicking a "Find Similar" button to invoke IntelliServ's Query By Example (QBE) feature. Search results thereafter became more relevant, but we worried that we were missing some data because our query had become too constraining. On the plus side, we easily created queries, modified them and chose e-mail, pager or Web page delivery of the engine's search results.

Once we set up a community of user IDs and associated personal queries (areas of interest express ed in keywords), IntelliServ began sending us e-mail (or, at our option, publishing dynamic Web pages for us to inspect). Verity says in the future it will offer automatic importing of user ID lists. The manual entry method required by the current version is quite tedious for large user populations.