Simple search API proposal, take 2

[Jamie McCracken]

Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen wrote:
> Proposed Updates for the Simple API:
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> 
>  - Change GetHitProperties (in s query_handle, in i offset, in i limit, 
> in as props, out a{sa{sas}}) to GetHits(in s query_handle, int i offset, 
> int i limit, in as props, out aas) where the output is on the form 
> [[HitId, props in rq. order], [HitId, props in rq. order], ...]. This 
> seemed to be the consensus of the recent discussions.

"aav" would be better than "aas" as some metadata will have muliple 
values (email:to, email:cc etc)

Although our rdf query output has moved from "a{ss}" to "aas" in the 
past, we will be shortly going to "aav" to handle the above cases better.


> 
> Stuff to Think About:
> ---------------------------------------------------
>  - Ordering : Is it fair to expect ordered results from the indexer at 
> all? From the new return type of of GetHits I would assume that the 
> result set was ordered. This may be fine in the simple api, but if we 
> want to use the same  data structures in the live api it is beginning to 
> look weird. Hits with a really high score might be added after all hits 
> have otherwise been retrieved. Also in the new query xml language you 
> can actually specify an ordering (and grouping) - does this make sense 
> at all?

we can ignore the hit score race condition.

The sort order should always include rank. If a result was asked to be 
ordered by say File:Size then the result set should be ordered by 
File:Size and then rank (so files with the same size will be ordered by 
rank). Of ocurse if no order by is specified then rank alone should be used

> 
>  - Moving ShowConfiguration() to 
> org.freedesktop.search.ui.ShowConfiguration()? A drawback is that we 
> can't guarantee that search.simple and search.ui is owned by the same 
> d-bus services. If we had a search.ui we could also add a 
> search.ui.ShowSearchTool(in s search_string).

a separate ui interface might be more apt


just my £0.02p


-- 
Mr Jamie McCracken
http://jamiemcc.livejournal.com/