Progetto Caere: un'applicazione Internet attiva per l'Information Retrieval di documenti SGML

In the process of creating an archaeological information system of the excavations in Cerveteri, the decision was made not only to use a more traditional database, but also to develop a recording methodology that connects the text of the excavation diaries, encoded by the application of a mark-up language (SGML), with the cartographic data. In order to query all the excavation diaries, an information retrieval application was required, with the aim to retrieve not only words but also specific meanings and contexts. In this paper the author describes the creation of an internal software application for providing information retrieval from SGML texts and of its subsequent implementation on a Web server. The paper is divided into two parts: the first describes the application itself and the concepts on which it is based and the second part discusses the technology that has been applied and the results achieved. In order to construct a querying system for the content of the excavation diaries, both ASP and VBSCRIPT technologies have been used, as they are particularly useful for constructing client-server applications for an intranet. Through applying such technologies, it has been possible to connect the textual sources with the digital cartography through specific hypertext links, allowing the visualisation of the search results in a browser such as Explorer or Netscape Navigator. This application has also been designed to allow data diffusion through the Internet.