Engine promises precise XML searches

Detailed searches and results with pinpoint accuracy — that's the promise of Xdex, an indexing engine for World Wide Web information written in XML.

Xdex, which ships this week, is the first off-the-shelf indexing engine for Extensible Markup Language, according to officials at Sequoia Software Corp., a Columbia, Md., XML software provider.

Priced at $1,995, Xdex runs on Microsoft Corp. Windows NT servers and plugs directly into the Microsoft Management Console for administration.

"Xdex is the first in a series of tools that we will be introducing that allow developers to take advantage of XML in the e-commerce space," said Clay Richardson, Xdex product marketing manager. "Xdex allows for the intelligent indexing and searching of XML documents."

Xdex takes advantage of XML's tagging system to deliver high-performance, context-sensitive searches. It uses smart spiders to search for information under different XML tags, and it automatically indexes that content.

The goal of Xdex is to provide Web site developers with the ability to offer highly targeted search results. For example, if a Web surfer were searching for information about the city of Columbia, Md., he wouldn't receive information about the Columbia River or Columbia University if he were using a portal that employed XML tagging and indexing.

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