this is the kind of thing that harvest provides for. basically, in
"tailoring" information dynamically (as opposed to going to a static menu
system) your user is faced with (recursively) traversing an association
graph. the user wants to see data with mortgage numbers. associativity is
the service we are providing. better associativity, however, classes data,
eg, via SOIF, so that the user has more coherent domains to search through
than "every document with numeric strings and the string 'mortgage'".
presently, SOIF provides for arbitrary degrees of data classification which
is a strong solution for most applications, and generally an optimal
solution for applications involving fairly regular data formats, eg,
reports or forms.
harvest provides for sites to cooperate or interoperate efficiently for
applications such as these since no one site could ever have space to
replicate the entire internet, or even a significant associative slice of
it, in providing a monolithic internet database.
basically the talent of harvest in linear interoperability, via SOIF, is
providing the architecture for this recursively infinite association graph
traversal in most forms of data, especially business data.
> and retrieve the information eith by email or a formatted newsletter.
> Can Harvest do this?
certainly you could put an email or such interface on the system, but your
users would probably be happier with something more responsive and flexible
like a web interface. an interactive interface provides the opportunity
for refining data collection, for discovering new sources of data, etc.
-john