DTL's DataSpot: Database Exploration as Easy as Browsing the Web...

Shaul Dar, Gadi Entin, Shai Geva, Eran Palmon

Data Technologies Ltd.
3 Tevuot Ha'aretz St.
Tel Aviv Israel 69546
+972-3-647-1661
{dar,gadi,eran,shai}@dtl.co.il
DTL's DataSpot is an advanced, programming-free tool that lets Web designers and database developers automatically publish their databases for Web browser access. DataSpot enables non-technical end users to explore a database using free-form plain language queries combined with hypertext navigation, in a fashion similar to using search engines such as Alta Vista to search text files on the Internet.

DataSpot is based on a novel representation of data in the form of a schema-less semi-structured graph called a Web View. The DataSpot Publisher takes one or more possibly heterogeneous databases, predefined knowledge banks such as a thesaurus, and user-defined associations, and creates the Web View. The DataSpot Search Server, which connects to any standard HTTP server, performs searches and navigation against the Web View, generating dynamic HTML pages that are returned to the user. The presentation and navigation of answers are controlled by templates that can be modified by the data provider.

The DataSpot product has been successfully deployed in diverse Internet and Intranet application areas, including electronic catalogs, yellow pages, classified ads, help desks and finance.