Contact:
Philip Van Cleave
Virginia Systems, Inc.
(804) 739-3200/FAX: (804) 739-8376
Email: vasys@concentric.net

WebSonar
Powerful New Text Retrieval
System for the Internet

February 5, 1997, Midlothian, Virginia. Virginia Systems announced
WebSonar, a new addition to their text retrieval product line. WebSonar
allows users to publish information quickly and easily on either the
Internet or an intranet, without having to convert their files into an HTML
format. Based on Virginia Systems' Sonar Professional search engine,
WebSonar can search over 12,000 pages per second, displaying the full
content and exact page numbers of all found documents. Searching can be
performed by any computer running a browser.

WebSonar's features include:

* Boolean, proximity, wild card, synonym, and phonetic searching. Synonym
searching allows the user to search for all related information through
WebSonar's built-in thesaurus. Phonetic searching allows searches to be
performed by sound, if the user is unsure of a word's spelling.

* Relevancy ranking which displays the most relevant documents first.

* Highlighting of the search phrase in context for easy recognition.
Rather than always taking the user to the beginning of a found document,
WebSonar automatically takes the user to the first page containing the
search phrase and highlights the search phrase.

* Go To Document command which displays the names of all found documents
and the number of times that the search phrase appears in them. Any
document can then be selected for viewing.

* Go To Occurrence command which displays one line of context for each
occurrence of the search phrase. Any occurrence can then be selected for
viewing in full context.

* The ability to step through search results one occurrence at a time or
one document at a time.

* Associated Words command which examines each occurrence of the search
phrase and then shows all words that are associated, or related, to the
search phrase. For example, the associated words for "United States" might
include "America", "country" and "congress".

* Support for non-HTML based documents, such as Microsoft Word,
WordPerfect, QuarkXPress and ASCII. Non-HTML documents are converted to
HTML by WebSonar on-the-fly at display time.

* Grouping of documents into "libraries," any of which can be selected for
searching.

* A complete corporate document retrieval solution. Documents can be
searched concurrently over the Internet/intranet using WebSonar and on a
regular network using Sonar Professional for the Macintosh or Windows 95.

WebSonar is currently available for Macintosh servers running WebStar and
is scheduled to ship n February. A WebSonar demo site is available at
(http://www.websonar.com). The demo site has over 300 megabytes of
documents to search, including the complete works of Shakespeare, the
Bible, hundreds of literary works, the U.S. Constitution, and much more.

Prices vary based on configuration between the number of local users and
the number of Internet users. A few common configurations are priced as
follows: 1 local user/1 Internet user - $395, 1 local user/5 Internet
users - $795, 1 local user/25 Internet users - $2,795, a site license with
unlimited local/Internet users - $25,000.

Virginia Systems, Inc. was founded in 1984 and specializes in document
imaging, text retrieval and index generation software.

For further information, contact: Virginia Systems, 5509 West Bay Court,
Midlothian, VA 23112-2506, Phone: (804) 739-3200, FAX: (804) 739-8376,
Email: vasys@concentric.net,
WWW: http://www.concentric.net/~vasys.
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