- system is a fielded free-text indexing and retrieval engine with a
- Z39.50 front-end. You can use our various toolkits or any commercial
- or free-ware Z39.50 client to access data stored in Zebra.
- </para>
-
- <para>
- FIXME - not a "first step" but a part of a complete system! -H
- </para>
-
- <para>
- The Zebra server is our first step towards the development of a fully
- configurable, open information system. Eventually, it will be paired
- off with a powerful Z39.50 client to support complex information
- management tasks within almost any application domain. We're making
- the server available now because it's no fun to be in the open
- information retrieval business all by yourself. We want to allow
- people with interesting data to make their things
- available in interesting ways, without having to start out
- by implementing yet another protocol stack from scratch.
- </para>
-
+ server is a high-performance, general-purpose structured text
+ indexing and retrieval engine. It reads structured records in a
+ variety of input formats (eg. email, XML, MARC) and allows access
+ to them through exact boolean search expressions and
+ relevance-ranked free-text queries.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Zebra supports large databases (more than ten gigabytes of data,
+ tens of millions of records). It supports incremental, safe
+ database updates on live systems. You can access data stored in
+ Zebra using a variety of Index Data tools (eg. YAZ and PHP/YAZ) as
+ well as commercial and freeware Z39.50 clients and toolkits.
+ </para>
+