Re: Followup: opinions on Search services

["John (J5) Palmieri" <johnp martianrock com>]

On Wed, 2005-04-06 at 16:27, Jamie McCracken wrote:
> Joe Shaw wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On Tue, 2005-04-05 at 21:58 -0500, Manuel Amador wrote:
> > 
> >>I was wondering, did any of you guys had a shot at trying Search
> >>services?  Did you find it useful?  Do you have any ideas for
> >>improvement in this area?
> > 
> > 
> > I haven't played with it yet, but I did peruse the code a little.  My
> > question is, why a new project when something like Beagle is aimed at
> > almost the exact same problem?
> > 
> 
> The problem is that neither of them are really optimal solutions nor are 
> they likely to achieve broad acceptance for one reason or another.
> 
> However for technical reasons :
> 
> 1) Indexing is both CPU and resource intensive ergo Python and C# are 
> not really a good choice for this - it would be a lot better to do it in C.

This is a misnomer.  C code can be every bit as inefficient and where
Python and C# are inefficient one can always go down and write modules
in a lower level language.  Point is don't optimize until you need to.

> 2) Use of an SQL database is a far superior, faster and flexible 
> solution to using a dedicated indexer like the lucerne engine (all other 
> competing engines like spotlight use sql databases). This is one area 
> search services has got right.

Don't know much about lucerne but a dedicated solution can often be
faster than a general solution such as a database.  Again I think this
is another misnomer without hard data to back it up.

> 3) It really needs to be a freedesktop solution written in C cause it 
> looks likely that KDE will produce their own solution so adding to a lot 
> of needless wheel reinvention.
> 

Freedesktop is not a dumping ground for every little bit of technology
that seems interesting.  Without divergence there is no diversity or
competition.  Your instance on C is an example of stagnation that could
cause projects to never get off the ground.  Things that need to be on
freedesktop.org eventually get there.  I fear that people are using it
as a holy grail that somehow legitimizes projects and magically makes
them acceptable to all parties.

--
J5