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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.
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