ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY RELEASES VERSION 1.5 OFTIPSTER SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE DESIGN DOCUMENT
The Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) today
released Version 1.5 of the TIPSTER software Architecture Design Document. The
architecture defines interfaces for information retrieval and extraction
components so that they can be more easily deployed together, share common
functional modules, and share common knowledge bases. TIPSTER sponsors
software to permit computers to review large amounts of text and select items
of interest.
The ARPA TIPSTER Text program, started in 1991, supports research to improve
informational retrieval and extraction software and works to deploy these
improved technologies to government users. This technology is of particular
interest to defense and intelligence analysts who must review increasingly
large amounts of text.
The use of the TIPSTER software architecture version released today will help
control the costs of deploying and upgrading text handling information systems
for the government. In addition, it will promote further research in text
handling information technologies by providing a means for researchers to share
software and knowledge bases. The TIPSTER systems engineer will keep a record
of conformance to the TIPSTER architecture of applications and products for
interested users.
This is the latest phase of the TIPSTER program. From 1991 to 1994, the
program improved information retrieval and extraction software algorithms for
accuracy and portability across multiple human languages and subject areas.
In the last year, the program has sponsored the development of the software
architecture, which is the joint work of a number of leading research
organizations: BBN Systems and Technologies, Cambridge, Mass.; Center for
Intelligent Information Retrieval, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass.;
Computing Research Laboratory, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, N.M.;
Courant Institute of Mathematics, New York University, New York, New York; HNC
Software, San Diego, Calif.; Management and Data Systems of Martin Marietta,
Philadelphia, Penn.; SRI International, Menlo Park, Calif.; TRW, Redondo Beach,
Calif.
While the architecture will be undergoing revision over the next year, it is
being used as the basis for a number of pilot intelligence correlation
applications. An up-to-date version of the Architecture Design Document is
available via Internet at the following URL: http://cs.nyu.edu/tipster.
