摘要 |
In order to retrieve article level content from a plurality of content providers, a federated search program receives a generic query from a user and dispatches the query simultaneously to a plurality of connector objects. Each connector object that is associated with a particular content source and contains source specific code that reformats the generic query into a proprietary format required for the associated content source. The proprietary query is then dispatched to the content source. When the results at the content source are ready, the result set is fetched by the connector. The fetched results are then mapped into a standard format. The standard result sets from the different content sources are then merged into a single consolidated result set. Duplicate documents are removed from the consolidated result set and the final results are sorted in accordance with criteria specified by the user and presented to the user.
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