Name of company or organization: Community School Networks, Inc.

Contact Person:
Name				Gary Markovits
Title				President
Address				3
City/State/ZIP code 		Syracuse NY 13244
Telephone #			(315) 443-4456

Duration of support by this sponsor for this project (start/end dates)
	9/94 - 8/96

Sponsor expectations

	Assistance in developing optimal computational strategies for
implementing their text indexing and query algorithms.  Access to NPAC
high performance computers.  Support investigation of intelligent,
concept-based text retrieval from very large text databases

Specific objectives

	Use of large disk arrays (30-70 GB) and multiple nodes of the
IBM SP2 for indexing large text databases.  Consultation and advice on
strategies for parallelizing both the index and query processing.
Consultation and joint project supervision on exploring the potential
advantages of storing the index in a relational or object oriented
database.

Relevance to the Center's target industry

	Study of the use of parallel computers and databases in text
retrieval specifically and in information systems more generally is at
the cutting edge for this growing industry segment.

Plan of approach

	NPAC and TextWise technical staff jointly analyse indexing and
retrieval algorithms and evaluate possible strategies using NPAC
expertise in parallel computing and relational database.  NPAC and
TextWise may jointly supervise student projects that prototype
selected strategies.  TextWise will be provided occasional periods of
exclusive of NPAC high performance computers for indexing large text
databases and for experimentation.

Purpose of any planned travel

	None planned.  TextWise is local.

Industry involvement

	TextWise is developing potential partnerships with other
Infomall members.  They are also being approached by large publishing
houses that want to make their primary information collections
available (for a fee) online with sophisticated search capability.

Technical innovation

	TextWise has unique concept-based retrieval capability that is
computationally intensive and requires high bandwidth dataflow.  NPAC
has an unusual array of expertise that can evaluate the range of
possible strategies including both parallel and distributed computing,
different input/output configurations of the possible platforms, and
use of relational database for the index.

Steps to commercialization

	TextWise is a start-up company that builds on software
developed in the SU IST department, mainly under ARPA funding.  It has
attracted venture capital, and maintains a research and development
branch in offices provided by CASE at SU, and a commercial branch in
Rochester NY.

Progress to date

	The orginal software has been ported to several platforms and
the original interface replaced with a WWW-based query interface.
Several meetings have taken place on HPCC strategy, with preliminary
conclusions.  Several text databases have been indexed using the IBM
SP1 and SP2 computers at NPAC.  A student summer project supervised at
NPAC began looking at the issues involved in using a database for the
index and translating queries into SQL.

Impact to date

	The task of productizing TextWiseUs software requires
extensive utilization of advanced computational resources and
facilities. Without access to the NPAC computing facilities, this
process would be very cost prohibitive to a small, startup company. In
addition, InfoMall staff personnel have worked closely with
TextWise. Once again, highly trained technical specialists may be too
expensive to be utilized by most small businesses.