Question on Xesam capabilities

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen]

2007/8/10, Luca Dionisi <luca.dionisi at gmail.com>:
>
> On 8/10/07, Evgeny Egorochkin <phreedom.stdin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Friday 10 August 2007 13:25:09 Luca Dionisi wrote:
> > > Is it possible with the Xesam API to "search within results"
> > > à la Google or even better?
> > >
> > > I mean, will I be able, with a Xesam compliant search tool,
> > > to do things like the following?
> > >
> > > - search all files of type development (*.c; *.h; *.java; ...)
> > >
> > > - within result set, search for  files containing some text
> > >   e.g. "implements"
> > >
> > > - within new result set, search for  files containing some
> > >   other text, e.g. "get_width ("
> >
> > This is easily implemented on the client side by ANDing the 1st, 2nd etc
> > queries.
> >
> > > - hilight the words that match the last search, and not
> > >   the words used for previous filtering stages.
> >
> > We don't have to provisions for this. Maybe a good idea.
>
> Indeed, I think it could be useful.  That's why I asked.  :P
>
> I thought that the "2-stage search" (as opposed to ANDing
> the criteria) could be used for that matter.
>
> And from this, the second question arises:
> >
> > > And could I expect fast results as for a classic query
> > > with a indexed search engine?
>
> Having a result-set (for the preliminary search) as a
> criterion for the final query, is it suitable for an indexed
> search? Theoretically?


In theory almost everything is possible. However with the speed of modern
search engines I doubt that it is worthwhile to cache the intermediate
result set server side. Just fire of a new query with new terms ANDed on as
Evgeny suggests. A UI can still present the illusion to the user that she is
searching in the result set. I would not be surprised if this is exactly
what Google does.

The short answer is "within the spec all your questions can be addressed
with good performance", it is however completely up to the search UI you put
on top of it.

Cheers,
Mikkel
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