Asset Retrieval Tools, Question Answering and Future

Nowadays, we are living in a world widely connected to the Internet where all users from the computer science area or not, are using search engines to find something. Different types of advances are facing these systems including song recognition and face detection. On the other hand, others relevant directions are being explored also. On July 2005, AskJeevs (ask.com) was acquired by InterActiveCorp for roughly $2.3 billions.

As you can see by the name, Ask.com is a question answer system on the web. In a paper from Communications from the ACM (CACM), Roussinov et al. discuss these systems with experimental data and interesting insights. Five years ago, I wrote a “paper” (in Portuguese) called: Common Component Market (CCM): Even your mother will want one! [you can see a draft in English here].

Nowadays, looking again from that paper, the Ask.com scenario, and the current search engines for source code, how far we are from doing questions such as the ones described in my “paper” and others based on requirements, design, and combining other information such as specific metrics.

The time will say it. Source code engines such as B.A.R.T, Merobase, Koders, etc., maybe can show it soon or not.