The word "portal" has come to mean a uniform web "front-end" to disparate "back-end" computer systems. Texis includes many portal-building features. The most important relate to web fetching, i.e., retrieving content from other web applications in real-time. A typical use of this ability is to create a "federated" search application that integrates results from disparate sources. Texis actually is a whole suite of tools that together enable a developer to create, deploy, and maintain web-based applications. The tool suite encompasses: a scripting environment; data importing utilities, a web crawler; a database; a search engine; and even a web server.