Editor's note: These minutes have not been edited.
Minutes of the IETF INDEX BOF
Held June 24, 1996
Chair: Michael Schwartz, @Home Network
Notes by Michael Schwartz (@Home Network) and Ryan Moats
(InterNIC)
This BOF reported on the outcomes of a Distributed Indexing/Searching
Workshop sponsored by the World Wide Web Consortium, held May
28-29. The workshop had participation from many representatives of
the search technology, search service, information server, and online
service communities. It produced a set of recommendations about needed
and practicable standards efforts, as well as several efforts to draft
new standards or modify current standards.
Schwartz discussed the workshop motivation and structure, a proposed
distributed indexing framework that arose from the first day's
discussions, and the recommendations of three breakout groups that
divided up parts of this framework to describe areas where
participants felt standards were needed.
The framework involved a protocol and toolkit for negotiating among
domain-specific standards; means of identifying search engines, query
languages, and ranking algorithms; domain-specific attribute sets and
user friendly descriptions; collection descriptions and packaging; and
consistency management and bulk transfer.
The first breakout group's recommendations concerned query routing, and
focused primarily on extensions to the Whois++ framework, as well as
some suggestions about development, interoperation with search vendor
products, and experimentation. The second group's recommendations
focused on a convention for embedding metadata in HTML without
browser or robot changes. The third group's recommendations focused on
notification mechanisms for coordinating updates between information
providers and indexers. There were also two BOFs, one on tags to
support robot-based data collection, and the second on providing a
Z39.50 profile to support the Stanford Digital Library group's informal
search & retrieval standards work.
The full workshop report is available at
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Search/9605-Indexing-Workshop/
After the report, Schwartz opened the floor for discussion about what
liaisons might be appropriate with IETF Directory groups, or for any
comments, questions, etc. The discussion was brief:
1. There was a suggestion that people attend the FIND working
group meeting Wed afternoon session.
2. There was a suggestion that knowledge of IETF efforts be
brought to this work, but also that this work not be brought to the IETF
until concrete proposals are available. 3. There was a suggestion to
consider using the IRTF as a body for
developing this work, and a comment that the IRTF intends to take a
more active role on providing a home for pre-standards work.
4. There was a question about the extent to which multiple
character sets and languages was addressed at the workshop. The
response was that it did not come up much in the discussion (although it
was discussed in a few of the position papers). 5. There was a comment
that content providers were not "at the
table", yet some of the requirements impact them. Schwartz suggested
that there were so many content providers it might be difficult to
involve a truly representative set, but that perhaps some could be
involved, and furthermore that online services and content hosting
services could represent the concerns of the content providers.
6. There was a question about whether there was any discussion of
other content types than HTML. Schwartz noted that this was also a
concern of the workshop attendees from the Z39.50 community, but that
the workshop focused mostly on simple data types, specifically HTML.
