Abstract: A data warehouse platform for automatic post-processing and post-aggregation of online search results and alerts from online vendors was developed, called Web Alerts. Contents from many information providers are being repackaged “agnostically”. The solution, built on the Lotus Notes & Domino groupware, is automatically receiving, parsing, aggregating and displaying a mix of records from Dialog, DataStar, Factiva, LexisNexis, CSA, STN and other vendors in a common web-based solution. This paper describes the design and architecture of the solution, how records are processed and aggregated, regardless of database or online host, and presented in a uniform format with respect to key fields such as Title, Author, Source, Publication Date, Company Name, etc., and the further interactivity offered in the database once the records are aggregated. The web solution may be used, e.g., in business intelligence applications and in corporate Intranets as a current awareness tool for sharing external as well as internal information, offering categorization of records for different organizational units, and personal customisation by creating subsets of records via a search filter. Other features like adding comments, flags, creating own documents, highlighting of original search words for easy perusal, and linking to web sites and patents, have also been added to the solution.
