Hi I wanted to run a benchmark .alg which will take a Filter into account. However, ReadTask, which is the base for a variety of search related tasks, does not support a Filter. When I reviewed the class, to understand how I can easily add such Filter support, I discovered a whole set of classes which IMO are completely unnecessary. ReadTask defines some with*() methods, such as withSearch, withTraverse etc. and many classes override ReadTask just to return true/false in those methods. WarmTask for example, returns true in withWarm() and false otherwise, while SearchTask returns true in withSearch and false otherwise.
This created a whole set of extensions that you either need to run in sequence (e.g. Warm, SearchWithCollector) or create your own extension just to get the right recipe for the operations to perform. I suggest we do the following changes: * Rename ReadTask to SearchTask -- that's because RT uses IndexSearcher, QueryMaker -- all that suggests it's about Searching and not Reading. It's only semantics, I know, but I think SearchTask is clearer than ReadTask * Get rid of all the with*() methods, and instead move to use properties: search.with.warm, search.with.traverse, search.with.collector etc. * Introduce protected createCollector, createFilter, createSort, for custom extensions * Create a completely new hierarchy for this task, throwing away everything that can be handled through properties only (like SearchTask, WarmTask etc.) If we do this, then extensions of the new SearchTask will need to ask themselves "do I want to search w/ a Collector/Filter/custom Sort?" and not "do I Warm to be executed?" The core operation behind this task is IndexSearcher.search. The rest are just settings, or configuration, as well as some added ops like warm, and traverse. If it makes sense, I can factor warm() and traverse() into their own protected methods, for extensions to override as well. It might make sense for warm because custom warms is something I'm sure will be needed. This will also allow running algorithms with rounds - different properties for different rounds. This approach does not prevent one from creating MySearchTask with pre-defined and hard-coded settings. But for many others, the question of which task to execute will go away - you execute SearchTask for the basic search operations, or w/ the default Collector/Sort, and you control it via properties. To create your own *SearchTask extension which hard-codes a recipe, you'll need access to all the do<OP> members, so I'll make them protected. But that's IMO is a rare requirement, than say running a search with warm + traverse, and you shouldn't be forced to create a ReadTask extension for that. What do you think? Shai
