The WilsonWeb search engine was built using a combination of ATG Dynamo (Java) and JavaScript (for the front end). Reference material (XML) is loaded and updated into approximately 20 - 25 Verity collections. Complex queries (often rules based) are generated based on user input to forms. Results are displayed in various formats, modified to user specification using XSLT (eXtensible Style Language Transforms) against XML (eXtensible Markup Language) data.

All subscription and authentication data is stored in an Oracle repository (seeded and updated from mainframe feeds). The underlying data is stored in Verity collections which are spread across multiple servers. These collections are optimized so that each record is stored once, but can have different looks for each of the products that it belongs to. A load process(Perl, XSL) was developed in which the data loaded is transformed following complex user rules. The load process is spread across 9 Solaris machines (will run on NT and will scale to the size of a complex). This process splits, re-formats, and loads approximately 12 million records and documents into Verity collections. The same input files are used to build Browse lists (coded in C with AVL algorithms for speed and efficiency) where users can look through word and phrase lists. Thesaurus and Browse functions have been provided to assist the user with drilling down to the desired results. There are also update processes for these collections and Browse lists.

An administrative interface exists for authorized users to customize the system's look and feel (text, titles, toolbars, graphics), and where features can be added or removed for certain sets of users at subscribing institutions (universities, corporations). The Help system is also configurable to reflect user customization.