 | Level: Introductory Sebastian Nelke (snelke@de.ibm.com), OmniFind and UIMA developer, IBM
18 Oct 2007 IBM® OmniFind™ Enterprise Edition is full of features and functionalities that allow you to
build up powerful, high value applications and solutions based on IBM's enterprise search functionality.
Part 1 of this series described in detail how to store selected text analysis results and their relations
among each other in a relational database. Part 2 focuses on how to combine the results
of structured database queries with the powerful capabilities of semantic search. Objectives - Build up powerful, high value applications and solutions based on IBM's enterprise search functionality.
- Combine the results
of structured database queries with the powerful capabilities of semantic search.
Prerequisites
This tutorial is written for people who want to build custom solutions based on
IBM OmniFind Enterprise Edition V8.4. To understand this tutorial
and get the maximum benefit of it, you should already be familiar with the
following topics:
-
Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA):
Basic UIMA skill is needed. You should know about UIMA typesystems:
- What is an UIMA typesystem?
- What does it look like?
- what it is needed for?
It's not necessary for
this tutorial to know how an UIMA annotator works internally, but things will be easier for you if you
have at least a vague idea of how annotators work and what they are good for.
If you already have a base understanding of annotators, you may want to
have a look at the source of the sample annotators found with this tutorial after you've
finished the tutorial.
-
DB2®:
Again, only basic skills are needed. You should be able to install DB2 and know how to
create a database and some sample tables. The database and all tables needed to run this tutorial
will be created by a script.
-
OmniFind:
You only need basic skills. During this tutorial you will
make use of the OmniFind administration GUI to create OmniFind collections and upload a custom
annotator and a database mapping file for the text analysis results. Each of these
tasks is explained in detail and there is a step-by-step description with screenshots
for each of them. However, you should already have a basic understanding of how
OmniFind works and how to use it. A look at the Text Analysis Integration book
found with the documentation of your OmniFind installation is also highly recommended.
-
Cas2Jdbc
You should be familiar with the features and the functionality of Cas2Jdbc. It is strongly
recommended to do the first tutorial of this series before continuing with this tutorial.
To become familiar with Cas2Jdbc, refer to
Part 1 of this series.
-
Semantic search and custom index mappings
You should have a basic understanding of what semantic search means and what custom index mappings are needed for.
To build your own applications using semantic search, you should have a deeper
understanding of custom index mappings. It is recommended to read the short chapter "Index mapping for custom analysis results" of the
"Text Analysis Integration" handbook coming with your OmniFind installation before continuing
with this tutorial. In case you prefer a more down-to-earth approach, you
might find "Semantic search in WebSphere Information Integrator
OmniFind Edition: Deploy a semantic search solution" (developerWorks, August 2005)
useful.
-
SIAPI
Again, you should already be familiar with the usage of OmniFind's SIAPI. Basic skill
is recommended for this tutorial. To get a better understanding of the source
code found with the sample search application in this tutorial, refer to "IBM Search and Index APIs (SIAPI) for WebSphere Information Integrator
OmniFind Edition" (developerWorks, January 2006).
-
Linux® and Windows®:
This tutorial is described for both Linux and Windows platforms, you should have
basic skills regarding how to copy files, create directories, run
scripts, and change file and directory permissions. In some parts of the tutorial, you have to
edit files found in the Download section. It is recommended to use an XML
editor of your choice
to manipulate XML files and validate them before you upload them to your OmniFind
system. The OmniFind system will reject invalid XML files with an error message but
it's more comfortable to see these errors in a good XML editor (that can, for
example, highlight the affected XML elements).
System requirements
To run this tutorial, you need to have IBM OmniFind Enterprise Edition V8.4 installed and running.
Make sure to have the latest fix pack installed. You also need DB2 Version 8.2 or later
installed. (Starting with OmniFind 8.4 this can be one and the same machine).
It is not recommended to run this tutorial in a production
environment. The sample document set found in the Download section of this tutorial
contains around 20 documents and consumes around 1MB
of space. The sample database on your DB2 machine
needs around 20MB of space.
Duration
2-3 hours
Formats html, pdf
Tutorial overview
This tutorial demonstrates how to combine the search results delivered by the OmniFind
Search and Index API (SIAPI) with the results of structured database queries. The
combination of semantic search and SQL queries allows you to build powerful applications
that can close the gap between structured and unstructured information.
| | | |
