In Verity, you CAN search within the "customX" fields as well as all other fields (category, author, etc...).
Verity is, however, mostly useless unless you are trying to find exact matches. The ranking engine in verity is the equivalent of the "FindNoCase" function in CF. It will return a T/F. Thats it. There is no ranking in Verity based on the NUMBER of times your search term was matched (or anything else useful such as "<h1>" or "<title>"). Verity automatically provides stemming (horse -> horses and vice versa) which is nice BUT it ranks matches the same (horse is worth the same as horses). It supports thesaurus (fast -> quick and vice versa), but the same ranking problem exists and MS SQL supports theasurus as well (without the ranking problem). In all, I would recommend against using Verity under any/all circumstance if there is even the slightest alternative. We just spent MANY hours building a robust search for a client based on the VERITY engine and we deeply regret it. Everything could have been done in SQL (SQL 2005 also has a VASTLY superior ranking engine to Verity) and then we could have simplified JOINs and other filters. Add the utility of the JOINs to a 20x (at least) performance INCREASE in MS SQL and you have a clear winner. If your content is specifically web sites, I'd also recommend checking out the google search API and/or google Co-op. Avoid Verity if you have ANY alternative options and you don't hate yourself. > Hi, > > (sorry if this post appears twice, having problems with the submission > page and our firewall) > > Iâm looking for other peoples opinion on searching via a database vs. > Verity searches. > > Iâm building new search pages for our course information system, with > the end result being website and course information results being > combined (if required) or filtering the results based on things like, > course information only, campus location, course type e.g. mainstream, > application only courses etc. > > Currently the course information search pages are different to the > site search. Course Information searches an MSSQL database whereas > the site search uses a couple of verity collections (via FarCry). > > The Verity engine is a little more limited than what I originally > thought, for example: you can only search the contents of the body, > not the custom1, 2, 3 and 4 fields or the title field. I did have a > look at using the new Category feature, but aside from it still being > too limited (by the amount of fields I possibly need to filter by) > itâs considerably slower to search than when not using categories. > Using a small sample of 1250 records, searching without categories > took an average of 150ms, when restricting the same search using > categories it took on average 3500ms. > So where Iâm up to now is either > > 1) Not using Verity for the course information and going back to > searching against the database. I could split the site search result > page to display two separated results, one based on the database > (course info) and the other on the verity collection (website). You > then would select which set of results to continue on with for page 2. > > > 2) Building x number of verity collections for each type of course > information search (application courses, mainstream etc) and combine > these when searching. The would mean that the body of all these > collections would have identical information, which just feels wrong. > > 3) Attach the different types of filtering options (as keywords) to > the end of the body section with some type of marker to let me know > from that point on is filtering keywords and to strip them out before > displaying the text on the results page. I need to give this one a > bit more thought, but this doesnât feel very future proof. > > Any other suggestions? > > Thanks for your time. > > Regards, > > Mark Picker > Internet Developer - External Business Systems > http://www.wit.tafensw.edu. au/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| ColdFusion 8 - Build next generation apps today, with easy PDF and Ajax features - download now http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/coldfusion/cf8_beta_whatsnew_052907.pdf Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:294481 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
