CompuServe Messages

There is a project afoot to develop something called "SFQL" or Standard Full-text Query Language. The principal investigator is Dr. Neil Shapiro, Scilab, Inc., 1921 Hexam Rd., Schenectady, NY 12309 Phone/FAX 518-393-1526. According to an article in CD Publisher News (6:1, March-April 91), this system should make retreival of full-text independent of user interfaces. In fact, according to the article, "the user can select the interface that meets his or her needs, and that user interface will work with all discs containing SFQL-compliant servers." I have a demo of the work-in-progress, but unfortunately it was written with Windows 2.0, and I haven't been able to get it to work with 3.0. The demo and about an inch thick pile of articles & papers was sent to me when I send Dr. Shapiro $10. I can't remember where I first read about it, though. It is very interesting, and I plan to follow up on the subject to write about it for Nautilus, as part of my on-going series on data structures for hypermedia publishing. Another possibility, if you have a lot of short, reasonably similar items is Lotus' Bluefish dbms for CDs. That's what Computer Select uses, and it is really fast and easy for the end-user.