Ask Jeeves Selects Sleepycat's Berkeley DB to Support its Question Answering Technology.Business Editors LINCOLN Lincoln, city and district, England Lincoln, city (1991 pop. 79,980) and district, Lincolnshire, E England, in the Parts of Kesteven, on the Witham River. , Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 18, 2001 Sleepycat Software Sleepycat Software, Inc. was the commercial entity behind the Berkeley DB, a widely used free software developer database with over 200 million deployments worldwide, now part of Oracle Corporation. , Inc. today announced that Ask Jeeves Noun 1. Ask Jeeves - a widely used search engine accepting plain English questions or phrases or terms trademark - a formally registered symbol identifying the manufacturer or distributor of a product , Inc., has selected Sleepycat's Berkeley DB (Berkeley DataBase) An open source database system that uses "key=value" pairs and is used to create indexes to tables and other data structures. For example, a record could hold a key (account number) and its value (row number), although a value can be any data structure embedded database (1) Database software that is included with an application rather than offered as a separate database management system (see DBMS). Tending to be compact and efficient, an embedded database generally includes fewer features than a full-blown DBMS. for question answering Question answering (QA) is a type of information retrieval. Given a collection of documents (such as the World Wide Web or a local collection) the system should be able to retrieve answers to questions posed in natural language. data management. With the assistance of Berkeley DB, Ask Jeeves answers tens of millions of questions every day on Ask Jeeves Web Properties and Business Solutions sites that license Ask Jeeves search and customer intelligence gathering technology. "We perform somewhere on the order of 8-10 Billion transactions with Berkeley DB on a monthly basis without failure," said Ed Boudrot, product manager at Ask Jeeves. "We selected Berkeley DB to store information because of its flexible architecture, extremely high transaction rate, and its ability to scale. In addition, our experience with Sleepycat's customer support has been outstanding. When we have a technical matter to solve, the Sleepycat team is responsive and effective." Ask Jeeves' Web Properties, serving users on Ask.com, AJKids.com, and DirectHit.com, require a high transaction rate. Ask Jeeves' Business Solutions, helping companies acquire customers, learn about their wants and needs, and provide services that build lasting, profitable relationships - key ingredients to succeeding on the Internet - require high availability Also called "RAS" (reliability, availability, serviceability) or "fault resilient," it refers to a multiprocessing system that can quickly recover from a failure. There may be a minute or two of downtime while one system switches over to another, but processing will continue. . Berkeley DB helps Ask Jeeves to solve unique challenges in these markets by providing enterprise-class database services in a package expressly designed for embedded Inserted into. See embedded system. use. Berkeley DB's power and flexibility make it easy for Ask Jeeves' software development team to build high-performance Web-based solutions quickly and easily. From the beginning, Ask Jeeves at Ask.com has allowed users the ease of interacting on the Web the same way they do offline. Users pose questions in plain English Plain English (sometimes known, more broadly, as plain language) is a communication style that focuses on considering the audience's needs when writing. It recommends avoiding unnecessary words and avoiding jargon, technical terms, and long and ambiguous sentences. and receive links to Web sites containing relevant information, services and products. Ask Jeeves' combination of natural language question answering, human editorial judgment and popularity search technology enables Ask Jeeves to provide targeted, relevant responses to user queries. This data is stored using Berkeley DB. "By combining its innovative natural language and popularity search technology with Berkeley DB, Ask Jeeves has become the 15th most popular Web property on the Internet," Michael A. Olson, vice president of marketing at Sleepycat Software, explained. "We've worked hard to provide an embedded database that scales well and remains fast and reliable at any size. Ask Jeeves' decision to deploy Berkeley DB convinces us that we've made the right choices." Berkeley DB is the most widely deployed embedded database in the world with over 200 million installed users. The product is Open Source and available for download To receive a file transmitted over a network. In any communications session, "download" means receive, and "upload" means send. The download/upload often implies a big/little scenario, in which data is being downloaded from the "big" server into the "little" user's computer. at http://www.sleepycat.com. About Sleepycat Software, Inc.: Sleepycat Software, Inc. (http://www.sleepycat.com) was founded in 1996 to develop, support, and distribute Berkeley DB commercially. The company is privately held, and has offices in Massachusetts and California. Sleepycat Software's Berkeley DB, awarded Favorite Database at LinuxWorld Expo, August 2000, is the Open Source embedded database engine behind most ISPs, wired and wireless networks, and e-commerce sites around the world. Developed in 1991 and available commercially since 1996, Berkeley DB is Open Source and runs on UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). , Linux, VxWorks, QNX A multiuser, multitasking, real time operating system for PCs from QNX Software Systems, Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario (www.qnx.com), that is noted for its low-memory requirement and rapid response. Similar to Unix, it has been in use since the early 1980s. , and Windows 95/98/NT/2000. About Ask Jeeves: Ask Jeeves is a leading provider of intuitive, intelligent natural language question answering technologies and services. Ask Jeeves' solutions enable companies to convert online shoppers to buyers, reduce support costs, understand customer preferences, improve customer retention and deliver a more humanized online experience. Ask Jeeves also syndicates its solutions to portals, infomediaries, and content and destination sites to help companies increase e-commerce and advertising revenue. Additionally, Ask Jeeves Web Properties help companies target and acquire qualified prospects online and provide consumers with real-time access to information, products and services. Business Solutions Ask Jeeves Business Solutions deliver essential customer conversion and retention services to corporate customers worldwide. By connecting people with answers through a combination of technology and human insight, Ask Jeeves helps companies provide a more personal, relevant experience for online customers. This unique combination delivers higher conversion rates, lower support costs, valuable customer intelligence and increased customer loyalty. Ask Jeeves' customers include AirTouch Communications, Compaq, DaimlerChrysler, Datek Online, Dell, Ford Motor Company, Hewlett-Packard, Iomega, iWon, Microsoft, Nike, Office Depot Office Depot (NYSE: ODP) is one of the world's leading suppliers of office products and services. The Company's selection of brand name office supplies includes business machines, computers, computer software and office furniture, while its business services encompass copying, , RadioShack, Toshiba and VerticalNet. For more information on Ask Jeeves Business Solutions and to see Jeeves at work for our customers visit, http://www.business.ask.com Web Properties Ask Jeeves delivers potential customers to companies' Web sites through a combination of advertising, shopping services and dynamic customer targeting and acquisition solutions available from Ask Jeeves at Ask.com, Ask Jeeves for Kids at AJKids.com and DirectHit.com. Currently reaching more than 11 million unique visitors A count of how many different people access a Web site. For example, if a user leaves and comes back to the site five times during the measurement period, that person is counted as one unique visitor, but would count as five "user sessions. each month, Ask Jeeves consistently produces superior click-through and conversion rates for service subscribers. |
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