MarkLogic in Defense & Intelligence – Use Case #1: Real-time Search and Data Enrichment
Our customers tell us, “I have to go through a huge dump of electronic documents. I need to find relationships, and identify topics, meetings, people, and places.” Here’s how MarkLogic can help. MarkLogic combines an Enterprise NoSQL database with an advanced search engine within a single package. This allows data to be loaded into the system as-is, where it is fully indexed and ready for searching – with no advance data modelling or schema design required.
As data flows in to the database, entities can be identified and information enriched – either automatically or via user-controlled editing. A place name, for example, could be enriched with coordinate information. This makes the information more easily searchable, accessible, and valuable for analysis. Data can be filtered interactively, in real time, including by drawing an area on a map to limit the results by location.
Once entities are found, they can be used to explore the data and find links between different documents. A wide range of binary documents can be handled by MarkLogic out of the box.
MarkLogic in Defense & Intelligence – Use Case #2: Sophisticated Queries
Our customers tell us, “Our organization generates a lot of information. It’s hard to keep up and decide what is relevant. Manually searching and trawling through results takes a lot of time too.”
Here’ s how MarkLogic can help. Because the MarkLogic embedded search capabilities were designed specifically to work with the database (versus other systems where developers have to develop code to tie them together), you can define very sophisticated queries, and get blazing fast results, too. Query terms within these can be weighted for relevance. Each user or department can create their own search relevant to their needs, AND save the search for re-use. This helps analysts prioritize and find high value information more quickly. These searches can be saved for later, or used by the alerting framework within MarkLogic to inform appropriate individuals when relevant information arrives. Information can be displayed on a map, graph, network diagram, or even HUD instead of plain text results. With MarkLogic, you get more than just a page of links.
MarkLogic in Defense & Intelligence – Use Case #3: Real-time Alerting
Our customers tell us, “I know what information I want. As soon as it arrives I need to be informed about it, and to make instant use of it. I don’t want to be bothered by junk though.”
Here’s how MarkLogic can help. Our Enterprise NoSQL database platform includes a real-time alerting framework that enables timely responses. Normally when you search you say “Give me all documents that match this query.” With the alerting framework, you say “Let me know when any information arrives that matches this query.” This makes your workflow proactive, and lets you get on with your work without having to remember to keep going back and re-running your query in case there’s new information available.
These alerts could be used to send information in real time to other systems, including sending emails, SMS or Instant Messages to yourself or other to let them know that new information has arrived. These alerts use the same advanced query criteria as regular user-initiated searching, helping identify the chaff from the wheat. You can even create a search to say “Let me know of any documents arriving that have similar content to these ones.”
MarkLogic in Defense & Intelligence – Use Case #4: Coping with the Data Deluge
Our customers tell us, “The scale of information we collect is mind blowing. From all over the web we collate information, along with our own internal data sources and reports. We’re struggling to manage all of this.”
Here’s how MarkLogic can help. Traditional systems like those built on relational databases (e.g. Oracle, SQL Server, etc.) are designed to handle a set of known data, with a format (or “schema”) that rarely changes. If you get new data that you want to add, that’s in a new format, then you need to update the schema that your system is based on – and that can take a while. With the accelerating pace of data creation in new sources – such as those on the Internet – designing (and updating) a system or schema only after information has been identified means you’re constantly behind the curve. MarkLogic’s Enterprise NoSQL database allows organizations to handle content without having to know the internal schema up front.
This provides great flexibility in handling emerging data sources. And, from a data volume perspective, deployments built on MarkLogic can be scaled horizontally across many systems to handle an ever increasing data load – because massive scalability was built in from the start. MarkLogic can be deployed either as a common repository for data unification, or as a metadata-centric data virtualization layer to consolidate high-value information across data silos. Either way, with MarkLogic organizations can funnel that data deluge into a single search application to make their users’ lives easier.