Platts unlocks its business information

Platts, a provider of energy information, is using Mark Logic’s technology as the foundation for LNG TraderNet, its interactive Web-based tool for managing analysis of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) markets. The service provides traders, analysts and other members of the LNG community with up-to-date news, pricing information, market fundamentals and more. MarkLogic Server helps Platts price, package and monetize its energy and metals information more effectively, according to Mark Logic.

Prior to the new system, Platts’ content was tied to different products and locked within collections of PDF files. With MarkLogic Server’s ability to load content as-is, Platts was able to unlock its business information and to eliminate the need to transform content, which was expensive and time-consuming.

Chris Sternberg, global director of product development at Platts, says, "As the LNG market continues to evolve, the solution has enabled us to surpass the limitations of traditional technologies and innovate in how we service our customers, delivering content in ways that were not possible before. LNG TraderNet is the only flexible online service to offer accurate LNG market data and provide customers with immediate access to the real-time and historic information energy traders rely upon to make important decisions, such as how to take inter-market effects into consideration in their own trading."

MarkLogic Server takes XML created as part of Platts’ newsletter production process and inserts metadata from a taxonomy to tag the textual content. That enables Platts to use the content that was previously locked in static PDFs and relate it to other contextual information, Mark Logic reports.

The solution also gives Platts custom publishing capabilities that allow users to extract parts of stories or an entire article for inclusion in an existing or newly created custom report. Platts also offers its customers new search and Web 2.0-style features that:

• allow ranking search results by relevance and/or number of previous views,
• relate search results to pricing assessments and other markets’ fundamental data,
• enable the automatic creation of lists including the most frequently mentioned keywords,
• permit users to save searches for future use and create RSS feeds from those searches, and
• numerically rank the quality of stories and post comments.

Platts is the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill.