CIS 524 Discussion Student Response 1 and 2

CIS 524 Discussion 1 post responses.
Respond to the colleagues posts regarding:

“Searching Textual Documents” Please respond to the following:
• Your company has been hired to design a product that will provide searches of textual documents and database querying. Your design team has not developed a product like this before. Examine the challenges associated with searching in textual documents and database querying. Describe how the five-stage search framework shared in Chapter 13 could be used to overcome those challenges.
• Assess current multimedia document search techniques and suggest three techniques to improve multimedia search experiences. Explain why you chose to recommend each of the techniques you suggested. 

JN’s post states the following: 
Greetings Class,
    There are several challenges when working when attempting to search textual information in raw form within a database query. Utilizing an unstructured data format will help with “structuring” this information, as opposed to the typical database follows: “rows, columns, fields” unstructured data essentially places all the details in one field. The traditional database will utilize a search engine which will read the unstructured data with created word lists for key items to search for (Kehoe, 2004). Many tools like Splunk do this already where it can ingest many different types of files and be able to index/search for particular fields and then develop keys and users can attempt to “structure” the data based on relevant field extractions, for instance search a word document and key on next 10 words after the “Test:” this is a word list that is used to then combine with an regex function to pull-out the needed information.  The five-stage framework: Formulation, Initiation of action, Review of results, Refinement, and Use (Schneiderman, 2018). This would be very helpful to aide in developing the tools needed to search these textual files. Once again, Splunk’s ability to be so awesome is because it has followed each of these stages. From understanding the search and presenting it to the user, the use of a database, search heads, and keys helps greatly. It was developed to “ingest” and search anything. The company should look into doing something very similar in order to compete with such a high profile name.
    
Multimedia search techniques are becoming more and more relevant. Take a look at how AWS and Google do their photos. The companies match objects and apply tagging based on the objects seen, they even allow users to apply names to faces and can search based of names, as well as places. Three techniques which could be used to improve searches are the following: sticky query, auto suggest/complete, and advanced search  (Sarkar, 2017). Sticky query is if the search engine were to allow a user to enter a search and let it remain in the field, this would help the user keep aware of what was searched.  Auto suggest/complete would be helpful because it is less typing on the user and helps guide them on their path in case they do not fully remember what they are trying to find. The advanced search would allow the user to search multiple tags or other options like location, geo, or names in order to refine the best search.

References:
Kehoe, Miles. “Relational Databases vs. Full-Text Search Engines – New Idea Engineering.” Home – New Idea Engineering, June 2004, www.ideaeng.com/database-full-text-search-0201.
Sarkar, S. (2017, December 18). 6 Ways to Improve the Search Experience on Your Website. Retrieved from https://wisdmlabs.com/blog/improve-search-experience-on-website/
Shneiderman, B. (2018). Designing the user interface: strategies for effective human-computer interaction. Boston: Pearson.
 

CIS 524 Discussion 2 post responses.
Respond to the colleagues posts regarding:

“Advanced Filtering” Please respond to the following:
• Describe the most effective advanced filtering and search interface. Argue why the interface you chose is more effective than others, and describe who benefits most from the interface you are describing.
• From the e-Activity, Google has been the dominant market leader for search engines for the past several years, despite a fairly basic interface and competition from competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo. Discuss reasons why Google has been able to maintain such a high market share. Also, suggest some ideas for a search engine that would be able to take market share away from Google.

JN’s post states the following:
 
Greetings Class,
    The most advanced search interface that i have had the pleasure to work with is a fully configured Splunk with dashboards and all. The interface allows customs dashboard to be created for different users to focus on their searches. It is also very developer friendly and allows many different tools to integrate custom dashboards to work with the ingested data. For instance cisco has a Splunk app which can easily parse logs and show the analyst what is needed. I’ve created Security, Compliance, and IT dashboards all of which provide specialized information as well as search parameters which can be used by the user to make advanced searches. I’ve created search indexes for management to view Internet activities of users, print activity, and even door/badge access activity.Splunk gives the user the ability to create the most advanced interface possible; however, it takes time and a ton of data science in order to build it properly.
     
Google has done an astounding job at the “keep it simple game”. Users are not bombarded by data and information when attempting to conduct their initial searches. Google peels away the meat and focuses on relationships with websites through primary links. The site does everything it can to be the best provider of searches, it utilizes geo/location data to show relevant searches based on proximity. It utilizes specialized AI and algorithms which are constantly updating how it ranks sites. After Google partnered with Youtube it became the best video search engine as well. One of the greatest tools Google search has is the ability to truly customize a search query. A user is capable of searching a specific domain, filetype, excluding information, and focusing on keywords. These qualities have created a second form of reconnaissance gathering known as “google hacking” a way to use public indexed by Google data to find more details about a company as well as different things connected to the Internet. Google crawled and found hundreds of thousands of live web cams which could be found via a specialized search. Although a great tool when in the power of the right folks, in an adversaries hands it could be detrimental to a company.

Sites:
www.splunk.com – Splunk information
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//pdf/GoogleSearchGuide-back.pdf – Google Searching
https://securitytrails.com/blog/google-hacking-techniques – Google Hacking Information