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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Hello,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I’m totally new to Xapian/Omega. I’ve
spent the last couple of hours reading any documentation I could find as well
as quite some postings from the mailing list archives. I’m interested in
using Xapian/Omega in combination with a website to optimize searching. However
I need some help to get started.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I’ve been building my website using PHP/HTML. I
use Mysql as db system. On the website I’m building there will be several
documents that can be searched:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>-<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font size=2 face=Arial><span
lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Forums<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>-<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font size=2 face=Arial><span
lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>User pages (containing information
about a site user)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>-<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font size=2 face=Arial><span
lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Group pages (containing information
on a group of users on the site)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>All these pages are created dynamically using PHP/Mysql.
Almost all the information on these pages is gathered from the database at the
moment a visitor opens a certain page. I have considered searching directly in
the Mysql database but I found out that the processing time would be unacceptable
due to the large sets of data. So I want to use Xapian/Omega instead.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>My question now is, what’s the best approach for
setting up a search engine with a Xapian/Omega backend?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>So far I’ve learned that I need to get all the
data I want to search in a Xapian database (in documents), indexed in a way that
I can optimize my search demands. I’ve looked at the PHP examples that
are included with the Xapian bindings and I do roughly understand how these
work. However I don’t understand when the index script will have to run. For
example: do I need to run an index script directly after I inserted a new forum
post in order to insert the search terms that are in the post in the Xapian database
and for the post to become searchable? Won’t this slow down the posting
procedure a lot?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Another thing I don’t understand (this probably
sounds stupid) is that when I use the Xapian PHP bindings/functions to index
and search, I don’t see where Omega comes in?! Or can I also use Omega
from within PHP? I think I don’t really got the hang of how Omega interacts
with Xapian and how Omega interacts with PHP (if the latter is the case at
all). <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Last question: does Xapian need a dedicated server or
can I also get reasonable performance when I have the Mysql database, the
Xapian database and the web server software on the same server? <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I know these questions are kind of low level but I
hope that someone can answer these so that I can get started. As I said I’m
totally new to this but I’m very anxious to learn.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Thanks,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Floris<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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