New Features and Enhancements for 8.1

This section briefly describes the new features of interMedia Text 8.1. These new features are common to interMedia Text releases 8.1.5 and 8.1.6.

Integration with Oracle

The interMedia Text 8.1 index is created as an extensible (domain) index to Oracle. As a result, you create the Text index and issue Text queries using standard SQL.

Other benefits of integration include:

• no policies, since the interMedia Text domain index is identified by name

• a single index that contains word information and possibly theme information in English

• ability to rename the index

• better query performance

• ability to use the extensible query optimizer

  See Also: For more information about renaming indexes and using the extensible optimizer, see Oracle8i interMedia Text Reference.

New Default System

A new out-of-box default system enables you to create a Text index immediately without explicitly creating and setting your own custom preferences for indexing.

For example at install time, interMedia Text establishes default indexing options, automatically setting language-specific preferences such as lexer and stoplist to the language you specify in your database setup. Oracle also detects your text column format and automatically filters the formatted text contained in these columns.

See Also: For more information about the default system, see Oracle8i interMedia Text Reference.

Filtering

Oracle8i interMedia text uses the Inso Corporation's filtering technology, which enables the system to automatically detect and filter most document formats. With this single filtering technology, the system can index single or mixed format columns.

You can also set up the system to use your own user filter.

The INSO filtering technology is also used to create plain-text and HTML output for document presentation.

See Also: For more information about supported document formats, filtering, and document presentation, see Oracle8i interMedia Text Reference.

Extensible Knowledge Base

You can add custom concepts, categories, words or phrases to the knowledge base to improve theme capabilities. You do this by creating the extension as a thesaurus. You import the thesaurus with ctxload and then compile the thesaurus with ctxkbtc to augment the existing knowledge base.

See Also: For information about the thesaurus loader, ctxload and the knowledge base compiler, ctxkbtc, see Oracle8i interMedia Text Reference

Hierarchical Query Feedback

Given a query expression, you can obtain related query term information (broader term, narrower term, related term). Your application can present this information to users to help them refine their queries.

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See Also: For more information about the CTX_DOC.HFEEDBACK procedure, see Oracle8i interMedia Text Reference

User Datastore

An additional datastore method, USER_DATASTORE, has been added. This data storage method enables you to define a procedure that synthesizes documents during indexing. Such virtual documents exist only during indexing, but content and structure are preserved in the index.

For example, a user-defined procedure might synthesize the date, author, and text columns into one document to have author and date information be indexed as part of a single document.

See Also: For more information about USER_DATASTORE, see Oracle8i interMedia Text Reference

Stoplist Enhancements

Support for Stopthemes and Stopclasses in Stoplists

In addition to defining stopwords, you can define stopthemes and stopclasses, which can be added to a stoplist.

Stopthemes are themes that are not to be indexed. Stopclasses define classes of alphanumeric characters that are not to be indexed, such as numbers.

See Also: For more information about the adding stopthemes and stopclasses, see the CTX_DDL package in the Oracle8i interMedia Text Reference

Dynamic Addition of Objects To Stoplists

You can add stopwords, stopthemes, and stopclasses to a stoplist after the index has been created.

See Also: For more information, see the ALTER INDEX command in Oracle8i interMedia Text Reference

Section Searching Enhancements

Field Sections

Field sections are new for 8.1. These are sections that are indexed as sub-documents. They have some performance advantages over zone sections.

See Also: For more information about document field sections, see the CTX_DDL.ADD_FIELD_SECTION procedure in Oracle8i interMedia Text Reference

XML Section Group

Use the XML_SECTION_GROUP to define sections in XML-style tagged documents.

News Group Section

The new section group object NEWS_SECTION_GROUP supports defining sections in news group formatted documents according to the RFC 1036 specification.

See Also: For more information about defining sections in XML and news group formatted documents, see Oracle8i interMedia Text Reference

Alternate Spelling

In German, Danish, and Swedish, interMedia Text recognizes the accepted alternate spellings of query terms. You enable alternate spelling with the BASIC_LEXER.

See Also: For information about alternate spelling, see Oracle8i interMedia Text Reference