Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!uhccux!munnari.oz.au!comp.vuw.ac.nz!dsiramd!csnz!paul
From: paul@csnz.co.nz (Paul Gillingwater)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: looking for text retrieval software
Message-ID: <110@csnz.co.nz>
Date: 5 Sep 89 20:26:03 GMT
References: <1989Aug30.204014.27985@agate.uucp>
Reply-To: paul@csnz.co.nz (Paul Gillingwater)
Organization: Computer Sciences of NZ Limited
Lines: 30

In article <1989Aug30.204014.27985@agate.uucp> andy@garnet.berkeley.edu (Andy Lieberman) writes:
>We're looking for a full text information retrieval package that runs on
>UNIX (the more flavors the better).  

It's easier for me to post -- replies bounce too often with many US
sites that refuse to use fully-qualified domains.

Disclaimer:  I work for a dealer that sells BRS/Search.

I believe that BRS/Search is probably a good choice for some
applications.  We have developed many applications that use it,
and find that it has a very good programming interface.  I'm less
happy with the documentation, although there have been big improvements
recently.  Where BRS/Search falls down is that it does not have
any relational links between records or strong subrecord structuring.

We have programmed around that limitation by writing and interface
between BRS/Search and Informix SQL, which gives the best of both
worlds, i.e. BRS is used for a full MARC catalogue, and Informix is
used for the circulation control system for our library package.

My only other grumble with BRS is its price -- I think it's a bit
high -- but now that BRS has been taken over by a publishing empire,
I think we may see some more aggressive marketing....

-- 
Paul Gillingwater, Computer Sciences of New Zealand Limited
Domain: paul@csnz.co.nz  Bang: uunet!vuwcomp!dsiramd!csnz!paul
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