"We want OpenSearch to do for search what RSS has done for content." OpenSearch is a collection of technologies, all built on top of popular open standards, to allow content providers to publish their search results in a format suitable for syndication. You can see how this works on A9.com. Many sites today return search results as a tightly integrated part of the website itself. Unfortunately, those search results can't be easily reused or made available elsewhere, as they are usually wrapped in HTML and don't follow any one convention. OpenSearch offers an alternative: an open format that will enable those search results to be displayed anywhere, anytime. Rather than introduce yet another proprietary or closed protocol, OpenSearch is a straightforward and backward-compatible extension of RSS 2.0, the widely adopted XML-based format for content syndication. Any site that has content-and a search box-can choose to return results in OpenSearch RSS. This includes travel sites, classifieds, encyclopedias.... If you can provide search results for something, it probably can fit into the OpenSearch model. Returning OpenSearch results is easy-the format is the standard set of XML elements, plus three additional elements designed to support navigation between pages. OpenSearch is comprised of: OpenSearch RSS: XML format for providing open search results. OpenSearch Description Documents: XML files that identify and describe a search engine. OpenSearch Aggregators: Sites, such as A9.com, that can display OpenSearch results. OpenSearch is not a search engine-it is a way for search engines to publish their search results in a standard and accessible format. And because OpenSearch is built on top of standard RSS, existing tools-such as blog readers-can read OpenSearch results natively. While existing RSS tools can't take advantage of all of the advanced features that OpenSearch offers, this backward compatibility guarantees a rich set of client applications for OpenSearch today. This item is taken from http://opensearch.a9.com/ Madhuresh Singhal Aurigene Discovery Technologies Limited, Electronic City, phase II, Hosur Road, Bangalore 560100 Phone 28521314-16 Ext.- 212 Mobile 98861 82822 E-mail: madhureshsinghal@yahoo.com http://nettalk2.tripod.com/