Re: communal bots

Bonnie Scott (bonnie@staff.prodigy.com)
Fri, 26 Apr 1996 13:54:20 -0400 (EDT)

>
> On another Note:
>
> I was wondering just now if communal bots could use RPC to log their information in a
> central site, with multiple bots depositing their findings in a clearinghouse kind of thing.
> Is this how the Web Ants <http://thule.mt.cs.cmu.edu:8001/webants/> model works? Would this
> be a resource saver (in terms of CPU cycles and network bandwidth) or what?

I'm not sure if Harvest would meet all your needs, but I give it two thumbs up for its levels of indexing that allow multiple applications for data collected once (multiple brokers talking to multiple brokers and gatherers), common format (SOIF; compatibilty with WAIS or Glimpse), and its easy customizability. Would that corporate politics didn't make things so difficult...

Could you tell us more about RPC and its advantages? Would I want to use RPC to make the Glimpse or WAIS database available directly? (Any security risks or other disadvantages?)

Bonnie Scott
Prodigy Services Company