Text in Oracle The Search Platform and Ultra Search Omar Alonso, Senior Product Manager, Oracle Corp. Stefan Buchta, Principal Product Manager, Oracle Corp. NoCOUG May 16 th 2001

Agenda  What is Oracle Text?  Introducing Oracle Text  Text in the database – Why Integration is Key  Performance and scalability  Ease of Use  Global Solutions  Search Quality  Specialized Indexes  XML  Document Services  Ultra Search  Summary

What is Oracle Text?  Formerly know as interMedia Text  Oracle Text adds powerful text search and intelligent text management capabilities to the Oracle database.  Oracle Text: – Fully integrated with the database – Offers premier text search quality – Provides several advances features for text management, document services, XML, etc. – Has the best internationalization set of features for multilingual text search applications.

Introducing Oracle Text – An example create index description_idx on PRODUCT_INFORMATION(PRODUCT_DESCRIPTION) indextype is ctxsys.context ; select score(1), product_id, product_name from product_information where contains (product_description, 'monitor NEAR "high resolution"', 1)>0 order by score(1) desc ; SCORE(1) PRODUCT_ID PRODUCT_NAME Monitor 21/HR Monitor 17/HR LCD Monitor 11/PM Plasma Monitor 10/XGA Monitor 21/HR/M Monitor 17/HR/F

Integration with the database  The attempt to separate text and normal business (structured) data fails: – Cost – Complexity – High latency of development and deployment – Performance

No Integration - Separate Everything Application RepositoryIndex Search Engine (API) Oracle Database File System B-Tree Inverted SQL C API

Full Integration – text, index, API, optimizer Application RepositoryIndex Search Engine (API) Oracle DatabaseB-Tree SQL

Integration Benefits  Low cost  Low complexity  High performance  High integrity  Manageability  Leveraging existing skills

Oracle Uses Oracle Text  Oracle internet File System  Oracle Portal  Oracle CRM  Oracle E-Business Suite  Oracle eXchange  Ultra Search  Oracle.com  OTN

Oracle Internet File System

Oracle E-Business Suite

Performance – illustration Large doc set – 100Gig (20million web pages)  Hardware : Enterprise Sparc  Task : web query – Web-style query syntax – 2-3 words – Return first 100 hits  40 queries/second  90% of requests take < 0.5 second  7 hours to create index

Performance – Query throughput  Oracle Text vs one of the best-known specialist Text search engines

Ease of Use, Ease of Development  Simple SQL and PL/SQL interface – Can be used by any developer that knows SQL – Can be called by any tool that knows SQL – Using any language: Java, JSP, PL/SQL, C, etc.  Choice of datastores – Stored in the database – Stored in the file system – Stored on the web (URL) – User-defined datastore

Global Solutions  Basic indexing/search works in any NLS language  Special support for Japanese, Chinese, Korean  Theme search and services available in any single-byte, white space-delimited language  Can mix languages, character sets in a single column  Can query across languages

Chinese, Japanese, Korean Text Character sets: Japanese: JA16SJIS, JA16EUC Simplified Chinese: GBK, GB Traditional Chinese: BIG5, EUC, TRIS Korean: KO16KSC5601 Unicode: UTF8 Lexing: Lexical segmentation for Japanese, Chinese Morphological segmentation for Korean

Multilingual Search

Cross-language queries  Can mix languages, character sets within a document collection (e.g. Chinese and English documents)  Can use English to query e.g. Chinese terms or vice versa.  Query a term which is expressed differently in simplified and traditional Chinese. select score(1), product_id, product_name from product_information where contains (product_description, 'TRSYN(monitor, Chinese)', 1)>0 order by score(1) desc ; Find products whose description contains ‘monitor' or its Chinese equivalents.

Search Quality  Exact word  Boolean expression  Phrase  Proximity  Fuzzy  Stemming  Wildcards – Prefix, substring index  Thesaurus, multiple Thesauri  ABOUT search  Theme (concept-based) search  Accumulate scores  Term weighting  Advanced XML search  XPath support  Query Feedback

ABOUT – themes and theme queries "We ordered a bottle of chardonnay to go with the fish, and cabernet sauvignon for the steak …" select id from docs where contains(text, ‘ABOUT(wine)')>0  The knowledge base allows Oracle Text to associate words and concepts.  Knowledge base contains over 400,000 concepts.  You can extend the knowledgebase to include – Words and concepts from your specialist field e.g. medicine – Associations of words and spellings to guide novice/internet users

Catalog Index  Optimized for response time on small text fields  True transactional DML  Supports structured query, including range query  Subset of CONTEXT query language – No fuzzy, stemming, about – User-friendly web-like query syntax

Classification  CTXRULE is an index type designed classification/routing applications  Efficiently take a document and find matching queries Classification Application Perform Action Incoming documents Matched Documents 9i9i Compares against rules

Prefix, substring index  Prefix and Substring are flavors of the CONTEXT index  Prefix will add more tokens to the CONTEXT index to efficiently process prefix searches (e.g. 'ora%')  Substring will add an index on substrings of each token, to efficiently process substring searches (e.g. '%oxy%')

Storing XML in Oracle  Decomposition – decompose documents into atomic elements – store elements in columns/rows – compose XML documents using SQL  xmltype – store XML as xmltype, use xmltype methods  Store as LOB or varchar – Store XML as-is, in a LOB or VARCHAR – Search using Oracle Text section searching or XPath

Content search and XML  Create index create index BOOKINDEX on BOOKS(text) indextype is ctxsys.context  Query by content select PRICE from BOOKS where contains(text, ‘Harry Potter')>0 order by price desc;  Create index to include section info create index BOOKINDEX on BOOKS(text) indextype is ctxsys.context parameters ('section group my_auto_section_group' ) ;  Limit content search to a section of text select price from books where contains(text, ‘Harry Potter within title’)>0 order by price desc;

Advanced XML searches  Nested section search The Matrix Introduction to Matrix Algebra select price from media where contains(desc, ‘matrix within title within movie’)>0  Search inside attribute values Bridge of Birds select title from books where contains(text, ‘Hughart within

More advanced XML searches  map multiple tags to same name The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (map H1 and H2 to section name of “headline”) select author from articles where contains(text, ‘Diamond within headline’)>0  doctype limiters to handle tag collisions … … … 123 Meheula Pkwy … map (foo)address to “ ”, (bar)address to “address”

Document Services  Extract Themes (major concepts) – Extract hierarchical structure  Extract Gist – Generic or Point-of-View – Sentence- or Paragraph- level  View a document as HTML – Highlight search terms, highlight navigation  Return results in a table or a PL/SQL table  Basis for Clustering, More Like This, …

Summary  Fully integrated with the database  Premier text search quality  Advanced features for text management, document services, and XML.  Best multilingual features in the market.

Introducing Oracle Ultra Search

Issues in Corporate Search  Information Management Crisis – Explosive Growth of Information flowing over corporate Intranets. – Knowledge scattered across: IT repositories, billions of documents, and data fragments. – Non-Uniform Information  Structured in databases.  Unstructured - Word processing doc., presentations.

Impacts of Bad Search  Customers - Turn to competitor’s Website.  Employees - Waste time and money on useless searches.  Oracle Ultra Search – Solves problem of finding relevant information. – Across your company’s many disparate information repositories.

Oracle Ultra Search  Out-of-the-Box solution that – Searches text across multiple repositories  Databases, HTML Pages, Files, Mail Servers. – Provides the best relevance ranking and globalization in the industry. – Provides value added Portal functionality. – Presents Web style interface.  Built onto Oracle’s proven, reliable Text Retrieval software and Oracle9i server.

Oracle Ultra Search Docum. Title Relevance

Ultra Search Applications  Portal Search – Most powerful search for Oracle9iAS Portal. – Build your own portal. – Special ‘Portlet’ crawls inside and outside of Portal Repository.  Canned Web Search for Oracle Text  Library or Archive Search  Content Management Platform Searc

Search Multiple Repositories

Value Added Portal Functionality  ‘Canned’ Web-Style Search  Aggregates Information For Indexing – Documents stay in their own repositories. – Search returns ‘normalized’ results, uniformly ranked by relevance.  Organize & Categorize Content From Multiple Repositories – Extract valuable metadata. – Improve search by narrowing through ‘fielded search’.

‘Out-of-the-Box’ Web-Style Search  Oracle Text Application – Uses public Text interfaces. – Enhanced with expertise about gathering and indexing information for best quality search. – No coding against low level API’s.  Oracle Text Retrieval Engine – Highly integrated with Oracle9i server. – Best interoperability with dynamic data. – Scalability and Reliability of Oracle platform.

Aggregates Information Gather Analyze Make Queryable Maintain  Gather – Crawls Web, corporate repositories  Analyze – Create index required for querying, filter  Make Queryable – Embedd through API  Maintain – Schedule crawling – Easy Administration

Powerful Fielded Search  Narrow search to parts of document - title, body, name of author.  Extract and use repository metadata – Word processing documents: Author, Title. – Databases: Identify Columns. – Header/Body/Attachment.  Unify repositories in common, logical terms. – Uniform set of results, ranked by overall relevance.

Flexible Metadata Mapping Search Term Repositories Metadata Fields

Ultra Search Architecture

Architecture  Simple, Robust Architecture Built on: – Oracle9i Server Platform – Oracle’s Text Retrieval Engine  Flexible Deployment – Server-Tier – Mid-Tier

Ultra Search Components  Crawler  Server Component  Query API & Application  Administration Tool  Mail API

Ultra Search Crawler  Multi-Threaded JAVA process. – Gathers documents from repositories you specify on a set schedule. – Maps and analyzes link relationships. – Filters (150+) Non-HTML Documents, extracts valuable metadata. – Indexes documents and data fragments.  Flexible Configuration – Run on one or more machines: ‘Remote crawling’

Ultra Search Crawler  Set Inclusion/Exclusion Domains – Limit crawling to corporate net or specific sections of it.  Maintain Fresh Search Results – Set crawling schedules for each Web site or repository.

Crawling Abilities  Web Sites (HTTP Protocol)  Database Tables – Oracle and any ODBC compliant database. – Local (Ultra Search instance) or remote database – Crawls both fulltext and ‘fielded’ columns.  Files (file:// Protocol) – Ultra Search filters, extracts text and metadata.  s (IMAP Protocol) – Crawl and index mailing lists through IMAP.

Ultra Search Query API  ‘Embed’ Ultra Search in your Portal or Application. – Customize look-and-feel to your requirements. – Easy integration with your application.  API for JAVA (JSP) and PL/SQL (PSP).  Returns data with or without HTML markup. – Build: Basic Search Form, Search Result Form...  Includes Highly Functional Query Application.

Java Query API Illustration 12 3

PL/SQL Query API Illustration

Administration Environment  Browser-based, Self-Service Web Application.  Define Ultra Search Instances.  Configure and Schedule Crawler.  Set Query Options To Narrow Searches. – Document Attributes (e.g. TITLE, AUTHOR). – Define ‘Data Source Groups’.  Manage Administrative Users.

Administration Environment

Summary  Eliminate the Chaos Inside Your Firewalls !  Oracle Ultra Search – Crawls, Indexes, and makes searchable your Intranet. – Provides Web-style search without the need for coding. – Organizes, categorizes, and unifies content from multiple repositories. – Leverages Oracle9i platform - reliable, scalable, always available.

A Q & Q U E S T I O N S A N S W E R S