Integrating Watson Explorer Engine with Other Software

Note: You can skip this section of the documentation if you are not planning to integrate IBM® Watson™ Explorer Engine into an application or online application framework.

There are three basic aspects of using Watson Explorer Engine and integrating applications that use it into your website or other web-based applications. An easy way to think of these is as being the front end and backend of the enterprise information navigation applications that you are developing using Watson Explorer Engine:

Input/Connectivity: deciding what you want to search and creating search applications that crawl your own data, metasearch, or federate search results from specific sources of information, enforce any existing security restrictions that you might have, and so on. Creating the connectivity portions of a Watson Explorer Engine enterprise information navigation application is typically done using the administration tool, as described in the Configuration section of this online documentation. Good starting points are located in the Sources and Search Engine sections.
Output/User Interface: integrating the output of your Watson Explorer Engine applications into your website or application framework. This is typically done in one of the following general ways:
- HTML - A Watson Explorer Engine application produces HTML output by default. The easiest way to use Watson Explorer Engine is to embed a form in your website into which you can enter query parameters. Submitting this form calls your Watson Explorer Engine application with your query parameters, and then uses the rendering capabilities of Watson Explorer Engine to display the HTML search results. You can use the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool to customize how both the search interface and the results of your queries are displayed. This is the most common scenario used when searching is the focus of your site and you do not need Watson Explorer Engine to be integrated into an existing web application framework. See Customizing the User Interface for more information.
- Output Integration via SOAP/Web Services - You can generate and use Watson Explorer Engine output via the SOAP/REST API of Watson Explorer Engine, as described in Using the Watson Explorer Engine API.
- XML - A Watson Explorer Engine application can generate various types of XML based on additional CGI parameters that you provide. This scenario is commonly used when you have an existing web display or application framework into which you simply want to integrate Watson Explorer Engine query results, letting your existing framework handle parsing and displaying the search results returned by your search application. For more information, see XML-Feed Overview.
OEM/Partner/Application API Integration - You can completely integrate Watson Explorer Engine into an existing application framework by embedding calls to specific Watson Explorer Engine API functions in your code or by making calls to web-based Watson Explorer Engine APIs. These APIs enable you to trigger calls to specific Watson Explorer Engine functions within new or existing application code.
API integration is primarily provided for Data Explorer OEMs and partners. Most Watson Explorer Engine application developers rarely have to use the Watson Explorer Engine API because HTML and XML interaction can be configured easily using the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool. If you find that you need direct integration between Watson Explorer Engine and your application code, see Using the Watson Explorer Engine API in the online or printed Watson Explorer Engine API Developer's Guide.

For a procedural description of how Watson Explorer Engine search applications work internally, see the Functional Overview of a Search Application section of this online documentation. For a high-level description of the capabilities of Watson Explorer Engine, see the Product Overview.