Tim Bray wraps up his very informative series of articles on search with a list of requirements for a (hypothetical) ideal search engine.
I'd love to see someone implement this. I've been less than impressed with the open source search engine choices. Some seem rather restrictive (in terms of the input the expect and the output they spit out), and others are hampered by complexity. Bray argues that search should fall into the category of it "Just Works" software. I agree.
What I'd really like to see is something that is fairly easy to set up and run, and will give me results in a structured format (ideally XML). Then, I can slice and dice and present the results in whatever language I'm using at the moment (Python, PHP, ColdFusion, whatever). Plus, I'd like to be able to easily integrate the full-text results with other services..."best bets" results, searches of other directories and databases, and so on. Lets hope someone jumps on Bray's suggestion.
Posted by Karl
December 17, 2003 08:15 AM