Files Used in This Tutorial

This tutorial uses a set of 43 HTML files that are installed as part of a Watson Explorer Engine installation. These files are physically located in the examples/data/metadata-example subdirectory of your Watson Explorer Engine installation directory (typically /opt/ibm/WEX/Engine). These files were designed to provide a set of files that were similar in structure - they contain structured information that can easily be interpreted as metadata, and from which that metadata can easily be extracted and used for demonstration purposes. These sample files provide a stable example that illustrates the basic principles of extracting and using metadata to enhance your queries and to refine the results that they return.

You can access these sample files in two ways:

by accessing, crawling, and indexing them as files. This means that you will only be able to work through this tutorial on a system where the Watson Explorer Engine software is physically installed or to which you have copied the example files.
by exporting them through your system's Web server and accessing, crawling, and indexing them through a URL.

Aside from the index.html file in this directory, all of the other files consist of a ten column table with a header and a single data row that provides the following information about a book on the general topic of automobiles. Each column in this data row provides the following information:

Genre
Year of Publication
Main Character
Author
Publisher
Synopsis
Sales Data (4 years of historical data)

The fact that each file provides information about a single book and provides discrete units of information that are easily parsed and identified makes it easy to extract and use metadata from these files in the course of this tutorial.

Tip: The Watson Explorer Engine ships with a sample collection called example-metadata that is pre-configured to use the sample files that are discussed in this tutorial by crawling them in the local filesystem, rather than by accessing them via HTTP. This search collection is pre-configured to use the internal variable install-dir to identify where Watson Explorer Engine is installed so that it will work on any Watson Explorer Engine installation. Watson Explorer Engine installations also include a sample source called example-metadata that is pre-configured to reference this search collection, and includes the parser that is discussed in this tutorial. You can use these samples as points of reference if you are having problems working through this tutorial.

To proceed to the next section of this tutorial, click Creating a Search Collection.