[Xapian-discuss] Can you search a subset of a database?

[Olly Betts]

On Tue, Oct 04, 2005 at 05:38:38AM -0400, tech at dbx.co.uk wrote:
> Given that I've added, and maintained my documents in order, is it possible
> to search a range of documents by doc_id? Instictively I think not, but it
> doesn't hurt to ask :)

It's not currently possible, though it shouldn't be that hard to add.

Are you thinking of a fake term which indexes all documents between d1
and d2, or about a couple of parameters to enquire which tell it to just
look at a subset of the database?  Muscat 3.6 allowed roughly the
former, but it didn't get much use that I can recall.

What are you wanting to use this for exactly?

> I know I could have multiple databases -but this then gives me the problem
> of moving one to the other and working out where to do updates and deletes.

Also, searching over multiple databases interleaves the document ids.
That's nice if the database sizes may change (because existing docids in
the merged database don't change), but is a pain if you're using the
raw order to do sort by date and have databases chunked by time period.

I've been thinking that an option to abut the document id ranges would
be useful for that situation.

Cheers,
    Olly