Dateline: 02/05/00
Updated: 02/26/00
There is no doubt about it - software agents or bots are hot topic again. Considering the amount of information on the Internet and in the corporate databases, we really do need a software that can operate on behalf of humans, processing information in a highly automated and customized fashion. On the other hand, last year has also brought us several excellent network programming languages like WebL and Rebol. The latest development in this field, called Network Query Language, or NQL, addresses the needs for modern programming language that can enable rapid development of agent applications.
NQL Solutions is an innovator in intelligent agent technologies, with distinguished leading technologist, David Pallman, author of "Programming Bots, Spiders and Intelligent Agents in Microsoft Visual C++". As a happy owner of the book, I appreciated his hands-on approach to creating agent applications and kept an eye for the new developments. Seems this new products is well worth waiting for: people from NQL Solutions provided "network" query language, to do for network programming what SQL (Structured Query Language) did for database programming. You may not remember the problems concerning database development in the early 1970s, using general purpose programming languages and proprietary interfaces, but there is a tremendous similarity to the network programming problems we are experiencing today.
NQL will hopefully become the ideal language for creating bots, spiders, agents, and middleware, equally well suited for desktop software, middleware, and server software. It is easy to use, with one statement per line, avoiding cryptic or unnecessary symbols and punctuation. It also provides access to common network protocols such as HTTP, FTP, NNTP, and TELNET, as well as support for up-and-coming standards such as LDAP and custom protocols that can be developed using socket programming facilities.
In practice, the job of getting a Web page and extracting data from it takes just a few lines of code*.
get "http://www.quote.com"
ticker = "IBM"
submit
match sQuotePattern
output date, time, open, last, change, volume
Notoriously difficult task of crawling the news site in search for a particular term now requires only one line of code:
fetch "www.cnn.com", 2, "Artificial Intelligence"
*Code samples taken from the NLQ manuals.
NQL can be used as a stand-alone development system or an integrated tool that brings new power to other languages. This means that programming languages such as Java and C++ can call NQL as a class or a DLL library, and the Visual Basic family of languages can use it as an ActiveX control interface. Web server applications written in Active Server Pages or client-side VBScripts can also use this method.
Strong database support is a key to success for language like this: NQL will access virtually any database through the Open Data Base Connection standard (ODBC). It can also "understand" various messaging protocols, like POP3, SMTP, and MAPI, and handle complex tasks in parallel by using a thread command to trigger multi-threaded execution.
Built-in pattern matching engine will compare text or HTML to dictionaries of weighted terms and phrases, determining the best category for content. Boolean search queries are also supported. These capabilities will allow the development of agents that can analyze, categorize, and route data intelligently without the need for human supervision.
That's not all - multimedia capabilities of the language are expected to be equally impressive. NQL's audio and video support includes the ability to play wave, MIDI, and MP3 files, video movies, and generating GIF, JPEG and BMP graphics dynamically. Speech engine support will include the ability to render text-to-speech. NQL's agent support drives Microsoft Agent, while assistants and wizards make agent script-writing and session recording easy.
NQL is becoming a key part of several applications from AplhaServ.com, including NQL Spotlight, a software application which enables users to automate the retrieval and organization of Web content into structured, common database form, where it can be easily accessed and utilized. NQL Spotlight can be seen in action at Jubii, the leading Web portal in Denmark and a licensee of NQL Spotlight 2.0. Programmers can also use the language to create and deploy intelligent agent-based applications from a Palm VII mobile computing device. Other well known users of NQL include Microsoft, General Magic, I-Search and others.
NQL is expected to be released in the first part of this year. Stay tuned for more news related to this and similar development tools by visiting our programming link section.
Update: NQL is now available for download as a free 30-day trial version.