Example: API-Based Metadata Tutorial
The first sample application that is discussed in this chapter is a programmatic version of a traditional Watson™ Explorer Engine search application. Traditional applications such as this one crawl a remote data source and return data from that source so that it can be indexed and eventually searched via a complete Watson Explorer Engine search application. Traditional Watson Explorer Engine applications that follow this model are commonly referred to as pull applications because they use a Watson Explorer Engine server to pull data from a remote data source for indexing, for use in verifying a user's authorization to see specific search results, and so on.
The pull model represents the most common type of traditional Watson Explorer Engine search applications. As the other example applications in this chapter show, Watson Explorer Engine applications can also take advantage of alternate models of data retrieval and indexing. This flexibility is one of the cornerstones of Watson Explorer Engine.
Overview of the Sample Metadata Application
The example application that is discussed in this section is an API-based version of the Metadata Tutorial that is provided with Watson Explorer Engine. It introduces you to the design and flow of Watson Explorer Engine applications that are written in programming languages such as Java and C# by providing an API-based version of a familiar application that you have previously worked through within the easy-to-use search application development and execution framework that is provided by the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool.
Working through the standard Watson Explorer Engine Metadata Tutorial in the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool is a pre-requisite for using this document. The Metadata Tutorial shows how to identify and extract data and create metadata from the material that you are indexing when crawling a set of files, and how to enable users to query, sort, and filter search results based on extracted metadata.
Watson Explorer Engine ships with sample files that are crawled and indexed to create the search collection that is used in this sample application. Watson Explorer Engine also ships with a sample search collection, called example-metadata, that is pre-configured for use in this tutorial. You therefore do not need to programmatically create and configure the search collection that is used in this example.
Leveraging the sophistication and ease-of-use provided by the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool significantly reduces the time required to develop the search collections and other search application components that are the data source(s) for API-oriented Watson Explorer Engine applications. The time saved by using the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool to create and configure your search collections can be used in perfecting the logic of your application rather than writing one-time creation and configuration code.