A service-based architecture for multi-domain search on the web

Abstract

Current search engines lack in support for multi-domain queries, i.e., queries that can be answered by combining information from two or more knowledge domains. Questions such as "Find a theater close to Times Square, NYC, showing a recent thriller movie, close to a pizza restaurant" have no answer unless the user individually queries different vertical search engines for each domain and then manually combines results. Therefore, the need arises for a special class of search applications that combine different search services. In this paper we propose an architecture aiming at answering multi-domain queries through composition of search services and we provide facilities for the execution of multi-domain queries and the visualization of their results, at the purpose of simplifying the access to the information. We describe our service-based architecture and the implemented optimization and distribution options, and we evaluate the feasibility and performance of our approach.