A new platform -- the XML content server -- has arrived, enabling a new wave of business applications: content applications. An XML content server combines the control and managability of an RDBMS, the performance and scalability of a search engine, and the fine-grained search and retrieval of XML and XQuery. The resulting server enables powerful, agile content applications that go way beyond search or traditional ECM (Electronic Content Management).

Today’s leading-edge content providers and publishers are transforming their search offerings into applications tailored to specific audiences -- delivering information products based on knowledge of the users’ roles, their activities, and the overall processes within which they work. We’ll show some examples of content applications in the wild, used by publishers such as Elsevier, O’Reilly, and Oxford University Press. Then we’ll dive into the technology needed to build them, illustrating the benefits of the underlying technical capabilities. Finally, we’ll offer a preview of the post-search world -- a world of content applications.