Faceted search (& classification) combined with visualization offers an user-friendly way to quickly find relevant information assets in thousands of objects across multiple systems. Moreover, it’s also possible to identify patterns while combining facets.
The QlikView Wine Guide is a good example of an useful faceted search application. Which cheap and excellent wine would fit to antipasti? What is the wine flavor of a country? Questions that are easily answered with this (demo) application. Another company that excels in faceted search is Endeca – though they don’t offer a real life demo, but the “guided summarization demo” is well made. SAP and Intel invested about 15 millions in Endeca four months ago. Siderean is also a company to watch that promotes “relational navigation” and is part of Oracle’s partner landscape.