Convergence of classical search and semantic technologies - evidences from a practical case in the chemical industry

With the availability of growing information repositories and the increasing importance of the knowledge factor, organizations are being increasingly challenged to efficiently support knowledge management processes with appropriate information structuring and retrieval technologies. Besides traditional information retrieval approaches, the use of semantic technologies like topic maps is becoming more important. In this paper, the potential value of these approaches, technological requirements, and applications are compared and appropriate recommendations are derived for a suitable choice of technology. Furthermore, experiences from a case in the chemical industry will provide further insights into the applicability of these recommendations in practice.