In May, 1999, the AltaVista^TM Internet search engine recorded about 300 million separate web pages. On an average day this year, between half a million and a million pages were added or changed. If you tried to read every document on the web, then for each day's effort you would be a year further behind in your goal.

As more and more information is available, finding exactly what you want gets harder and harder. Find something that looks promising and increasing congestion could mean you have a long wait while you download it. When you've finally got the information, can you trust it? The "answer" you were looking for might not be true; worse - it might even be dangerous.

If you're a professional, or a researcher, or anyone with an important enquiry, you need a way to find and fetch information efficiently and you need confidence in the information you get.

DESIRE is a cutting-edge Internet development which offers a framework for just that.