OK, I know this is a big topic, so I am wondering if anyone can point me to specific resources or has any experience they would like to share.
We are creating a site in A4D for a client that will incorporate a search engine. The data to be search is particularly text heavy, lots of essay type question and answers. Delivering relevant results will be key since lots of imaterial data wil be present in the data to be searched (words like "and", etc.) So my question is twofold. First, how to present the engine to the user in such a manner to guide them to provide relevant criteria for searching. Like: search between these dates, for articles of type X, for answers to question X, etc. It seems to me that one of the reasons that search engines would fail (usability, not technically) is by requiring complex criteria for good results. It should be easy for the users to find what they are looking for with having to completely describe every last detail. Second, how to do this technically? With a database that stores questions and answers separately, as text, searching over multiple fields for the same data seems cumbersome - right? Could we store the data as xml files and do blob text searching? Or do keyword storage for each article/question/answer? And then how to rank results in order of importance according to their criteria? We can use quantity of found results, dates of material to rank the results. What else could be used? The site will not be public (it will require a login both internally and externally) so public site searching is out (I think). The engine would have to be contained using A4D and their 4D database. Thanks! Michael Check _______________________________________________ Active4D-dev mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.aparajitaworld.com/mailman/listinfo/active4d-dev Archives: http://mailman.aparajitaworld.com/archive/active4d-dev/
