Rich and scalable peer-to-peer search with SHARK

SHARK is a novel concept and middleware service for search in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Rather than flooding a network like Gnutella or imposing numerical IDs on objects like distributed hash tables, it is based on directed routing of keywords in a multidimensional redundant metadata hierarchy. SHARK arranges nodes and objects in the network and in semantic clusters. In spite of its rich keyword search capabilities, it achieves a high degree of scalability, outperforming random networks by several orders of magnitude. It can easily be adopted for applications as diverse as file sharing, P2P trading, or distributed expert and knowledge market places.