Search anomoly

Jon Polish · #1 04-18-2007, 10:36 AM

Hello:

I am using UR pro 3.0.4.0 on Windows XP SP2.

I was quick searching for one word - why. That is the word - why (please let's not turn this into an Abbott and Cosello routine). The results displayed all of the items in my database. I was curious, so I examined a sample of the items to discover that not one contained the word. Thinking this through, I guessed that these words are in the exluded keywords list. An examination of this list and testing of searches with other words on this list indicates my presumption is correct. Furthermore, any combination of these words produce the same result. Hence, I cannot search for discreet items containing the words who and what and when and where and why.

Why should these words trigger false hits of the entire database? If I want to search for any or all of these words, ideally I would expect accurate hits. If this is not possible, I would expect a dialogue indicating that I have chosen to search for words that are not indexed AND display no hits.

Any opinions?

Jon

quant · #2 04-18-2007, 10:39 AM

use advanced search with wildcard option ...

Jon Polish · #3 04-18-2007, 10:42 AM

Yes, but this is not obvious. If you do not have the entire list of excluded keywords in your head, or if you do not (tediously) refer to that list, you will get incorrect results.

Jon

quant · #4 04-18-2007, 10:42 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jon Polish
Why should these words trigger false hits of the entire database? If I want to search for any or all of these words, ideally I would expect accurate hits.

as you said, excluded keywords are removed from search, so you are effectively searching for "anything" ...

quant · #5 04-18-2007, 10:43 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jon Polish
Yes, but this is not obvious. If you do not have the entire list of excluded keywords in your head, or if you do not (tediously) refer to that list, you will get incorrect results.

Jon

if you want those to be keyworded, just remove them from your list ...

quant · #6 04-18-2007, 10:46 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jon Polish
Yes, but this is not obvious. If you do not have the entire list of excluded keywords in your head, or if you do not (tediously) refer to that list, you will get incorrect results.

Jon

it is maybe not obvious because you didn't familiarize yourself with UR enough ...

Jon Polish · #7 04-18-2007, 10:53 AM

I agree that this could be easily done and I thank you for the suggestion.

Isn't the purpose of the exclusion list to speed up imports and clips? The other purpose (I think) is to keep the size of the index down. I imagine this has other benefits such as improving the speed of the program. My thinking is that there is reason to maintain such a list, but if you forget, you get inaccurate results.

What happens if I include an exluded word as part of a set of words I am searching for?

I don't know, maybe it's just me...

Jon

quant · #8 04-18-2007, 10:58 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jon Polish
What happens if I include an exluded word as part of a set of words I am searching for?

as suggested by its name, the excluded word will be excluded from the set of words you are searching for ...

dasymington · #9 04-20-2007, 06:41 AM

It seems completely daft to me that UR returns everything if you search for an excluded word; it should warn you that your search consists entirely of excluded words.

janrif · #10 04-20-2007, 06:52 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by dasymington
It seems completely daft to me that UR returns everything if you search for an excluded word; it should warn you that your search consists entirely of excluded words.

I agree & there are some other counter-intuitive things in UR which, it seems, one has to get used to. Maybe it's because it is such an open architecture, i.e. so customizable. That's not meant as an excuse for the 'daftness', just a thought.

Jon Polish · #11 04-20-2007, 07:07 AM

Thank you Dasymington and Jan. I thought I was alone in this observation (and in others, primarily performance related when dealing with large databases and importing). When performing a hurried search during a phone conference, one need to rely on the results. I think that a warning, at the very least, is warranted.

Jon

quant · #12 04-20-2007, 07:44 AM

maybe there could be "status line" just below the typing line which would display what UR actually search for ... just like for example google does:

if you search for: test this system
it will return:
Results 1 - 100 of about 571,000,000 for: test this system.

so that you know "this" was excluded from the search ...

Well, actually there is a status bar where it shows number of hits, but this wouldn't probably the best place to show this info