Network robot for query searching internet or intranet

摘要

To assist a user to query for information available on sources attached to a network, the information sources most relevant to the user are selected and the user query is formatted for each information source according to a description of each information source written in a wrapper description language. The wrapper description language includes facilities for specifying an entire regular expression in terms of component regular expressions so that, upon recognition of one component regular expression of the entire regular expression, actions can be executed with variables bound as of the time of recognition of the component regular expression, the actions actually being executed only if the entire regular expression is also recognized. The formatted query is transmitted to each of the relevant information sources and data fields relevant to the user query are extracted from the relevant sources according to the description of the relevant source returning each response. The relevant data fields are presented to the user.