ALIBI: a novel approach to resource discovery

The exponential growth of the Internet has resulted in what is known as the resource discovery problem. Although the network makes it possible for users to retrieve enormous amounts of information, it provides insu cient support for locating the speci c information that is needed. Various tools have emerged that either simplify the task of browsing the network or attempt to index all the available information in a central catalog. Alibi (Adaptive Location of Internetworked Bases of Information) is a new tool that succeeds in locating information without the use of centralized resource catalogs, navigation, or costly searching. Its powerful query-based interface eliminates the need for the user to connect to one network site after another to nd information or to wrestle with overloaded centralized catalogs and archives. This functionality was made possible by an assortment of signi cant new algorithms and techniques, including classi cation-based query routing, fully distributed cooperative caching, and a query language that combines the practicality of Boolean logic with the expressive power of text retrieval. The resulting information system is capable of providing fully automatic resource discovery and retrieval access to a limitless variety of information bases.