XTech 2005: XML, the Web and beyond.
Beagle is a desktop search system that is currently being developed by Novell.
Beagle acts as a search aggregator, providing a simple API for constructing and launching queries that search multiple data sources. Pluggable backends do the actual searching; Beagle consolidates and ranks the search results as they come out of the backends and passes them back to the querying client. Beagle includes a core set of backends that build full-text indexes of your personal data, allowing you to efficiently search your files, e-mail, contacts, calendar, IM logs, notes and web history. These indexes are updated in real time to ensure that any search results will always reflect the current state of your data.
Because Beagle's query API is completely asynchronous, it can efficiently search remote data sources. One of Beagle's core backends can query Google via their web services interface, and an experimental network backend allows queries to be forwarded to instances of Beagle running on remote hosts Unlike other desktop search products, Beagle is free software and has an open, modular architecture. It is relatively simple to build new search backends or to add filters for indexing new file types.
Beagle is part of the Dashboard project, a broader initiative to develop innovative new ways for people to find, manage and share their data.
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Jon Trowbridge
Novell, Inc.
Jon Trowbridge is a longtime GNOME hacker and free software advocate. He is the technical lead of the Beagle project and is currently employed by Novell.