[dev] Horde Unified Search

[Chuck Hagenbuch]

Quoting august huber <a at pbx.org>:

> I mean that you have a path IE:
> http://site/horde/search/rewrite.php/username/imp/messagefolder/messageid
> which when accessed via the spider will simply dump the raw contents of the
> message (or calendar event, note, task), along with any corresponding
> metadata.
> When this same path is accessed via the actual user will redirect to show
> the corresponding message within imp.
>
> To support this, when the spider hits the URL
> http://site/horde/search/rewrite.php/uesrname/imp/messagefolder
> it will be presented with a list of URL's for all of the messages insde
>
> The purpose of this methodology is to expose all horde data in a method
> which _ALL_ webspiders understand and will be able to index - a spider-able
> tree of data containing internally referencing hyperlinks.

I see how that simplifies things, but doesn't it seem like a bad idea  
to expose all user data to a web spider?

> I would propose exposing shared data to the spider repeatedly for each user
> to simplify access control.  The downside is redundant indexing, and and
> more complications in regards to notification of changes to the indexing
> agent.

What if a user is removed from a group? They shouldn't be able to see  
that group's content anymore.

> the filtering is done by path so that users can only see documents within
> 'their path'.

I think this works okay for individual user data, but I think there  
are too many quirks to applying it with shares. It might work better  
if you applied the path approach to shares, so that a user would  
search a path for each share (or be able to search specific shares).  
But I haven't explored that yet in detail.

> I am convinced this is not the most elegant way to accomplish the goal of
> 'unified search', however it appears to be the most feasible approach to
> ensure interoperability.

Interoperability with what? Other search engines?

> I am focusing my work around the google search appliance as most of the
> searching I need to do relates to documents accessible via gollem, so I must
> confess my bias here.  This does not excuse me from developing a solution
> which will be of use to others not willing to drop the cash for a GSA
> however.

Sure. If the main motivation, maybe it'd be good to start with Gollem,  
and see about expanding it from there? Sometimes you need to think  
generally to avoid problems later, of course, and I'm sure there'll be  
hitches, but sometimes trying to come up with a universal solution  
keeps you from coming up with _any_ solution.

-chuck

-- 
"we are plastered to the windshield of the bus that is time." - Chris