These "private" versions of AltaVista lack the heavy hardware that makes the Web tool such a screaming performer.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Digital Equipment hit a grand slam with its AltaVista Internet search engine (
http://www.altavista.digital.com
). Now, the company is trying to repeat its success with free-text search programs for PCs, LANs, and intranets. This software family goes by the cumbersome name of AltaVista Search
Private Extensions
, but the programs themselves are anything but clumsy.
From a marketing point of view, it's an unbeatable idea
. AltaVista is, without a doubt, the search engine of choice for the Internet. Practically speaking, however, it's another matter entirely. The problem is that the Private Extensions lack what made their big brother successful -- screaming performance, thanks to Digital Unix running on an arsenal of high-end servers. Instead, th
e Private Extension servers are constructed to run on either Windows 95 workstations or Windows NT servers. In both of these cases, any Web browser can act as a client to the database server.
While it's still too early in the development process to make any hard predictions about the baby AltaVistas' speed, they're clearly not going to be as fast as the server we know and love from use on the Internet. Then again, most of us don't have the luxury of running applications on maxed-out Digital Alpha clusters either.
From your desk, you won't be able to tell the difference between your local AltaVista servers and the Internet server (except for the
performance slowdown). The interface looks and feels the same as ever. Behind the front end, the database engine, while taking different roads, works as its Unix elder does. For example, with advanced searches, you use Boolean-style operators -- the one odd fish is "AND NOT" for "NOT" -- and you can narrow searches by restricting them to particular fields in the automatically generated records.
On the server side, while query results come in at a decent clip, full-text indexing takes a long time. You'd be well advised to run this job in batch mode at an obscene hour of the morning, when it won't impact anyone's real-time work.
The only real problem with the new AltaVista spin-offs is that there's nothing new here. Long before the Web was a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee's eyes, askSam Systems (
http://www.asksam.com
), with its eponymously named free-text database product, was indexing and retrieving data for PCs and LANs. Today, the company's Web Publisher does essentially the same job as AltaVista. What's more, askSam bests AltaVista in the number of file formats it supports.
For example, the AltaVista servers can work with most Microsoft formats, several graphics and spreadsheet formats, and all Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) formats. However, askSam can do all that and adds Lexis/Nexis, WordPerfect, and database formats like the Xbase family's DBF.
Now, make no mistake, AltaVista does a fine job of organizing information from your PC to your intranet. It's just that you should look at other products, rather than simply leaping for AltaVista. You may find that the best-known product is not the best product for your office.
Product Information
AltaVista Search Private Extensions............$29.95 single-user version
........
......................................$899.95 25-user workgroup version
plus server license
...........................................$15,999.95 250-user intranet version
and server
Digital Equipment Corp.
Maynard, MA
Phone: (508) 493-5111
Internet:
http://altavista.software.digital.com/
Circle 1000 on Inquiry Card.
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Besides letting you use a Web browser, the local AltaVista services come with their own front end.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is a freelance writer. You can reach him at
sjvn@bix.com
.
Local AltaVista Searching
