Corpora: Software release: BNCweb

From: Sebastian Hoffmann (sebhoff@es.unizh.ch)
Date: Wed Jun 05 2002 - 10:02:50 MET DST

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    We would like to announce the release of BNCweb, a web-based
    interface to the 100-million word British National Corpus.

    ***What is BNCweb?***

    BNCweb is a user-friendly, web-based client program for searching and
    retrieving lexical, grammatical and textual data from the British
    National Corpus (BNC). It relies on the BNC server program, SARA, to
    provide a convenient interface between the user and the rich variety
    of annotated text in the 100-million word BNC. Thanks to its
    integration of MySQL, a very fast SQL-database server, BNCweb is able
    to extend the functionality of SARA. It thus offers a whole range of
    additional features for corpus analysis, such as:

    - distribution of the query result over various metatextual categories
    - very flexible collocation analysis
    - tag sequence search (for retrieving grammatical patterns)
    - sort
    - user-definable frequency lists (restricted e.g. to certain
    patterns, POS-tags)
    - etc.

    BNCweb can be accessed by several users at the same time -
    performance will vary according to your hardware set-up. At Zurich
    University, we have had 20 concurrent users without experiencing a
    major slow-down of the system. Of course, BNCweb can also be used on
    a stand-alone computer (i.e. with the web-browser and web-server on
    the same machine).

    Please consult the BNCweb homepage (http://homepage.mac.com/bncweb)
    for more detailed information about the individual features. An
    extensive manual is also available.

    ***Availability***

    BNCweb is now available for non-commercial use. You can order your
    own copy for a shipping and handling fee of 30 Euro. (No restrictions
    apply as to the number of installations or users per institution.)
    This fee includes notification of future upgrades and some basic
    support by e-mail. For more extensive support, special conditions
    apply. Further information can be found at
    http://homepage.mac.com/bncweb.

    ***System and Installation Requirements***

    BNCweb requires no special installation procedure or client program
    *on the part of the end user* - any web-browser (under any kind of
    operating system) can be used to access the BNC via the internet or a
    local area network.

    On the server side, a BNCweb installation requires:

    - a UNIX server (e.g. Linux, Mac OS X)
    - a full installation of the BNC World Edition (see http://info.ox.ac.uk/bnc/)
    - some additional UNIX tools (e.g. MySQL, Perl)

    In its current version (2.0), BNCweb is exclusively compatible with
    the BNC World Edition. Users with an installation of the first
    release of the BNC will have to purchase a copy of the BNC World
    Edition before being able to use BNCweb.

    The BNCweb team: Hans Martin Lehmann, Sebastian Hoffmann and Peter
    Schneider (all Zurich University)
    e-mail: bncweb@mac.com

    -- 
    

    Sebastian Hoffmann Englisches Seminar der Univ. Zürich Plattenstrasse 47 CH-8032 Zürich Tel: +41-1-634 3551 Fax: +41-1-634 4908



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