Using the Projects GUI

If you click the Projects section in the Watson™ Explorer Engine administration tool's Configuration section, you'll be presented with a tabbed view of the currently selected project (query-meta is the default). While configuring Watson Explorer Engine projects and their components, the currently selected project is always shown beside the Project: label in the left navigation area in the administration tool. Clicking the Projects navigation link at the top of this navigation area will bring you back to the project editing interface from any other parts of the Configuration section.

The tabs on this screen enable you to edit project configuration data graphically, and provide different views of the current project, with different levels of complexity:

• Components: lists the basic settings for the current project. These options include the Base Project (the project on which this project is based), the default sources that are used for simple and advanced queries, the display that is associated with this project (custom-display by default), the main language default associated with this project, the input forms used for simple and advanced queries, and the name of the XML macro used as the main routine for this project (main by default).
• Simple: lists the current settings of the most frequently configured options for the Clustering, Display, Fetch, Language, Metasearch, Query, Query Modification, and User areas of a project, plus a catch-all section for additional project settings entitled Other. These options include the main and secondary languages, the default output display, default sources, and the default number of results to cluster for the user, for example.
• Advanced: displays separate tabs that provide access to all of the sets of options that are provided on the Simple tab. The tabs that are available on the Advanced tab are the following:
  • Display: displays options that are associated with the display that is used to show search results for this project.
  • Clustering: displays options that are associated with the clustering in the search results for this project.
  • Metasearch: displays metasearch, advanced query modification and general query options that are associated with submitting queries to search applications based on this project.
  • Reporting: displays options that are associated with generating status and usage reports for search applications based on this project.
  • System: displays options that are associated with the Watson Explorer Engine installation with which this project is being created.
  • Misc: displays general, user-oriented, and project-wide option settings for the Watson Explorer Engine installation with which this project is being created. This includes HTTP header settings that identify the type of content that it contains, the encoding that is used for that content, redirection URLs, content to append to the header, and so on.
  • Modified: displays all of the options that are modified from their default values in this project.
  • All: displays all Watson Explorer Engine project options in one screen. This tab might take some time to display due to the large number of available options.
  • Binning: displays any binning sets defined for the project and their configuration. Binning is explained in the Refinements and Binning; its use is illustrated in the Tutorial: Using Refinements to Simplify Result Selection.
  • Declarations: enables you to create your own variables. This is an advanced feature, and will be explained in a later tutorial.
    Tip: If you define project-wide variables, use them in your application, and then delete the variable definition in the project, an error will be triggered. This error occurs wherever your application tries to use the now-undefined variable.

Much of Watson Explorer Engine is based on the concept of retrieving XML information and transforming it in various ways by using XSL. The Watson Explorer Engine administration tool provides a graphical environment in which you can configure the variables, options, XSL code, and other applications that are used to retrieve, process, and display this information. Using the administration tool is not mandatory. Watson Explorer Engine also enables you to work at a lower level if you are intimately familiar with XML and XSL by directly specifying project options as CGI parameters, as explained in the Setting Options Using CGI Parameters.