Abstract
This paper describes Rama, a first generation experimental information retrieval and filtering system that attempts to recover useful information from various Internet sources including USENIX news and anonymous FTP servers. The focus of the Rama system to date has been on building a distributed query and information retrieval system, which provides an interface to heterogeneous information services. A user of Rama sends one or more asynchronous queries to a Rama server using existing SMTP e-mail clients. The server periodically searches local and remote Internet services. Searches are prefiltered with the use of timestamps. Data objects which are newer than the timestamp are then searched via a query mechanism which relies on a combination of vector-distance, pattern matching operands, and boolean operators. Results are weighted according to how closely they match queries and are posted via e-mail to the user. Input to the e-mail client can be further filtered — one can use the MH mail system and sort input by weight. Results indicate that the current system is useful and extensible. So far we have assumed that existing e-mail systems will be used for input and output and have not attempted to construct special client interfaces. Efforts are underway to extend the system with WWW searching capabilities and construct a special WWW oriented user-interface.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barrie, F., and Foster, S., “Veronica Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ),” 1993, ftp://veronica.scs.unr.edu/veronica-docs/veronica.faq.
Berenstein, N., and Freed, N., “MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part One: Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies,” 1993, Internet Engineering Task Force, RFC 1521.
Berners-Lee, T., Cailliau, R., Groff, J., and Pollermann, B., “World-Wide Web: The Information Universe,” 1992. Electronic Networking: Research, Applications and Policy, Vol. 2(1), pp. 52–58.
Bowman, Danzig, Hardy, Manber, Schwartz, “Harvest: A Scalable, Customizable Discovery and Access System,” 1994, University of Colorado, Technical Report CU-CS-73294.
Cerf, V., and Kahn, R., “The Digital Library Project,” 1988, Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Technical Report.
Chapman, B. D., “Majordomo: How I Manage 17 Lists Without Answering'-request' mail,” 1992, LISA VI Conference Proceedings.
Clarke, A. C.,Rendezvous with Rama, 1973, Harcour Brace Jovanovich, New York, N.Y.
Clarke, A. C.,The Fountains of Paradise, 1978, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, N. Y.
Deutsch, P., and Emtage, A., “An Electronic Directory Service for the Internet,” Proc. USENIX Winter Conference, pp. 93–110.
Droms, R., “The Knowbot Information Services,” 1989, Internet Engineering Task Force, Draft.
Garcia-Milina, H., and Yan, T. W., “SIFT — A Tool for Wide-Area Information Dissemination,” 1994, Stanford University, ftp://db.Stanford.edu/public_html/sift/sift.ps.
Hardy, D., and Schwanz, M. F., “Essence: A Resource Discovery System Based on Semantic File Indexing,” 1993, Proc. USENIX Winter Conference, pp. 361–374.
Kahle, B., and Medlar, A., “An Information System for Corporate Users: Wide Area Information Servers,” 1991, ConneXions — The Interoperability Report, Vol. 5(11), pp. 2–9.
Kantor, B., and Lapsley, P., “Network News Transport Protocol (NNTP): A Proposed Standard for the Stream-Based Transmission of News,” 1986, Internet Engineering Task Force, RFC 977.
Kozierok, R., and Maes, P., “Learning Interface Agents,” 1993, Proc. of AAAI.
Linn, J., “Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail. Part One: Message Encryption and Authentication Procedures,” 1993, Internet Engineering Task Force, RFC 1421.
Luotonen, A., and Altis, K., “World-Wide Web Proxies,” presented at the 1st International Conference on the World-Wide Web, May 1994, Geneva, Switzerland, http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Proxies/.
Manber, U., and Wu, S., “Agrep — A Fast Approximate Pattern-Matching Tool,” 1992, Proc. USENIX Winter Conference.
Postel, J. B., “Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP),” 1982, Internet Engineering Task Force, RFC 821.
Postel, J. B., “File Transfer Protocol (FTP),” 1985, Internet Engineering Task Force, RFC 959.
Pu, C., and Schwartz, M. F., “Applying an Information Gathering Architecture to Netfind: A White Pages Tool for a Changing and Growing Internet,” 1993, University of Colorado, Technical Report CU-CS-656-93.
Salton, G.,Automatic Text Processing: The Transformation, Analysis, and Retrieval of Information by Computer, 1989, Addison Wesley Publishing.
Schwartz, R. L., and Wall, L.,Programming Perl, 1990, O'Reilly and Associates, Inc.
Sheth, B., and Maes, P., “Evolving Agents for Personalized Information Filtering,” 1993, Proc. of the 9th IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Applications.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Binkley, J., Young, L. Rama: An architecture for Internet information filtering. J Intell Inf Syst 5, 81–99 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00962625
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00962625