SW-Lookup® basic idea

The targets

• Simple installation
• No additional license fees - use existing workstation power
• As simple to use as a search engine
• Graphical output
• No usage of Java, Javascript or ActiveX Controls, thus no security holes!
• Use the intelligence inherent to the Smallworld® GIS

The solutions

• SW-Lookup® Dispatcher, a small JAVA program, provides a small intranet server on any machine on your network. This machine may have any operating system which is capable of running JAVA. The only prerequisite is that all machines on your network use TCP/IP as their communication protocol (which is usually the case in Smallworld® installations).

• So-called peerservers provide access to the GIS data. Peer, because there may be several peerservers on your network which run on a peer level and which are assigned the incoming requests by the Dispatcher, which chooses the peerserver with the minimum load. Thereby the load is distributed " fairly ".

  Each peerserver exists as a MAGIK component, which is simply loaded in the GIS image of an arbitrary workstation which accesses the GIS data you need.

  The index, which provides access to the GIS data, is created and maintained by a search engine. Hereby, the SEPIA architecture (Search Engine PlugIn Architecture) provides the possibility to use different search engines; SW-Lookup® is currently shipped with a MAGIK based search engine, but we will provide other search engines later, or any search engine can be "plugged in" conforming to SEPIA. The configuration of the search engine is done via a graphical interface, which makes the administration job even easier.

• An arbitrary browser on the network talks to the Dispatcher as if it were an internet server (to a certain extent, it is an internet server). You can use the HTTP standard port, or any other port available.

  The dispatcher provides the search main page to enter the search arguments. Simply type in one or more words you are looking for, and you will receive a result list, which leads you to the pre-configured graphical and alphanumerical representation of the objects.