Case Study - Distributed Directory Services for Heterogeneous Databases

The Challenge: A.J. Boggs received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and three other federal agencies to develop a directory service to improve access to relevant information in widely distributed databases.

The Solution: By incorporating an Internet-based distributed directory protocol, using Whois++ and the Common Indexing Protocol, A.J. Boggs built a mesh of index servers which allowed for the rapid location of resources and the power to maintain current indices and avoid centralized servers.

Results: The project has led to several more research efforts (LogCast, Lifedata, and ITSZone), commercial successes (Toxnet, America’s Talent Bank, and CLCD), and produced the A.J. Boggs' Search Engine. Several other technologies were developed and remain under development. A.J. Boggs continues to develop distributed directory service products that present a unified system instead of a collection of databases over Web infrastructure.