Abstract
With RetrievalWare 8.0™ the American company Convera offers an elaborated software in the range of Information Retrieval, Information Indexing and Knowledge Management. Convera promises the possibility of handling different file formats in many different languages. Regarding comparable products one innovation is to be stressed particularly: the possibility of the preparation as well as integration of an ontology. One tool of the software package is useful in order to produce ontologies manually, to process existing ontologies and to import the very. The processing of search results is also to be mentioned. By means of categorization strategies search results can be classified dynamically and presented in personalized representations. This study presents an evaluation of the functions and components of the system. Technological aspects and modes of operation under the surface of Convera RetrievalWare will be analysed, with a focus on the creation of libraries and thesauri, and the problems posed by the integration of an existing thesaurus. Broader aspects such as usability and system ergonomics are integrated in the examination as well.