Contegra Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of data integration services, specializing in the design and implementation of text retrieval, taxonomies and classification systems. Contegra’s client Web sites include WebMD's ACP Medicine and the American College of Surgeons Surgery' Principles and Practices (ACS) online references for physicians.

"We switched over to dtSearch because the implementation was very straightforward. dtSearch also works better with the XML environment that we set up for maintaining our clients’ sites," said Rob Wiesenberg, President, Contegra Systems. "dtSearch was also being used elsewhere in WebMD, and that made it easier to centralize on."

Mr. Wiesenberg also likes the flexibility of the dtSearch Engine for linking to the extensive taxonomy Contegra provides for WebMD. "The glue that we’ve done is synchronizing the taxonomy to the full-text search capabilities of dtSearch."

For example, Contegra worked with WebMD to create an extensive and intuitive taxonomy or table of contents as well as a sophisticated medical thesaurus for both ACP Medicine and ACS. Contegra worked to hook up the medical thesaurus for the sites so for example, a full-text search under dtSearch for myocardial infarction would also retrieve heart attack.

Contegra’s implementation of dtSearch for WebMD also made use of Contegra’s "smart XML" format to give users the ability to pinpoint search results sets. Under Contegra’s "smart XML" format, a user could limit a search to tabular data, chapters or even images. Even with "smart XML" overhead, adds Mr. Wiesenberg, "dtSearch search response time is great."

Finally, Contegra synthesized document retrieval with taxonomy at the end of a dtSearch search process. "When a user retrieves a document, the retrieval process automatically synchronizes with the taxonomy," says Mr. Weisenberg. "For example, a search for women and high blood pressure not only retrieves the relevant documents, but provides the taxonomy context where they comes from. In this way, it is easy for the user to quickly retrieve other relevant data from the same taxonomy section."

For more information on Contegra Systems data integration services, please call (914) 328-2269 or email info@contegrasystems.com. You can also visit Contegra on the Web at www.contegrasystems.com.