[LINK] On with the Search Wars - A9.COM

[Adam Todd]

>It seems they offer some good tricks too
><http://a9.com/-/company/whatsCool.jsp>, including "Search inside the
>Book", and not to forget  "Web Search: Web search results are provided by
>Google."  Que??

Ahhh!  I've just done this myself!

how to make a generic web site with a simple URI present specific information!

With our production management system growing and the number of 
productions, co-productions and external productions becoming a nightmare 
of administration, I'm trying hard to get the web interfaces online so 
people can "help themselves" and take the load off the phones.

To do this, I had to create an easy way for people to get access to the 
productions.  Currently it uses a short name of up to 8 characters for the 
title of the project, however I'm going to further implement the ability to 
use the film's FULL title in the URI.  Not a big issue really, just a 
search command.

But the process of exchanging a simple easy to read URI to a unique search 
feature and the background code is so simple!  Even the rewriting rules of 
the inbound URI to a URI that the web server and the CGI's can actually 
process is easy.

When you go to (eg) http://iconoclast.inoz.com/caughtii/  it actually 
re-writes that to the REAL URL which is 
http://iconoclast.inoz.com/system/application.cgi/caughtii/.....

There is no directory called "caughtii" it's virtual.  On top of that so 
are all the "commands" that are added to the end, like:

/caughtii/cast
/caughtii/crew

and so on.

Even Synopsis!

But better, the developer doesn't need to create html pages for every 
virtual site.  If you want to change the page look, you can create a 
directory by the short name (the CGI uses this to find things) and then add 
any command pages you like:  cast.html in the format that you want to have 
displayed.  Of course you must use the metatag commands I've created in my 
"new" language!

It's a VERY powerful interface.

I'm considering re-writing it as an Apache Module to speed it up even more 
and make it a permanent function of Apache like SSI is that can then be 
used by any web site on the server without special configuration.

It can also send emails by trigger.

One feature I'm going to add is the ability to create a static page the 
first time a page is called, then check the creation date of the page and 
the "auditdate" of the initial returned query and see if there is a 
change.  If not, display the static, instead of using microseconds to make 
all the SQL queries again and build a new page!

Each page will have a unique name and identifier and when one is created, 
the old one is automatically archived and replaced.

Now is that cool or what?

The web designer who is currently working with me on the interface has been 
blown away by the application's ability to handle everything from 
displaying data to putting form content into databases and email messages.