University of Houston
Department of Computer Science

In partial fullfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Science


Govindaswamy Devanand
will defend his thesis

BAGI - Bio Access Guide to the Internet A Meta Search Directory


Abstract

The World Wide Web (WWW) is a dynamic, decentralized and diverse medium. Navigating through the WWW to find information is a challenge. This thesis reports on the implementation of a meta search directory of resources available in the field of biology. The two main phases involved in this implementation are indexing useful data and presenting it to the researchers with a user-friendly front end. Indexing data is usually accomplished by three different methods, viz., using search engines, directories and meta search engines. In this thesis, we use the results returned from the meta search engines and present them in a directory format. This novel approach is the ideal method for creating a specialized search engine. For presenting this data, an Oracle (RDBMS) back-end database driven by a WebDB front-end is used. The front end is designed so that the maintenance of the meta search directory is simplified. There is also another web front end for displaying the raw data gathered, before it is refined and inserted into the database. Initially, this meta search directory will serve as a "yellow pages" reference and index to biological software available on the Internet. Later, leveraging the scalable architecture of the system, the meta search directory will expand to include listings of ribosomal databases, molecular biology databases and search services.


Date: Wednesday, December 8, 1999
Time: 3:00PM
Place: 550-PGH


Faculty, students, and the general public are invited
Thesis Advisor: Dr. Stephen Huang