The Structured Information Manager: A Database System for SGML Documents

One of the important standards for document interchange and representation that has emerged is SGML, the Standard Generalized Markup Language. SGML is designed to capture the logical structure of documents, i.e. the logical components such as titles and paragraphs and their interrelationships. SGML is a complex standard, and the design of a database system for managing SGML documents poses many challenges. In this talk, we describe an SGML conformant database system, called the Structured Information Manager (SIM), and illustrate how the support of document structure can help in many important applications by describing how SIM has been deployed to provide public access to databases of legislation. The Structured Information Manager (SIM) is a document database system designed to manage multigigabyte collections of documents containing unstructured text (ASCII), structured text (including SGML and MARC), binary objects (such as images and videos) and other kinds of data. As an information retrieval system, SIM provides a client-server model of processing and supports a wide range of user interface platforms, including command line, MSWindows, Macintosh, and X. SIM uses compressed. inverted file technology for accessing large text collections using both query and browsing paradigms [ZobMof92]. Both Boolean and natural language queries are supported and response times are sub-second, even for multigigabyte databases. SIM is standards based. It provides direct support for SGML, the international standard for document representation and interchange and 239.50, the international standard for client server communication in an information retrieval applications [SacArn95]. For Web access, an HTTP to 239.50 translation is supported. By directly supporting SGML, documents of arbitrary complexity can be supported by SIM and a collection of documents can be treated as a database of information. SIM is supported and marketed in Australia and New Zealand by Ferntree Computer Corporation. Research and