THUNDERSTONE NEWS
February 2002 - Archive
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CONTENTS
- New Webinator knows to ignore 'junk'
- Developers' conference starts April 24
- Texis case study: Booksite.com
- Enhancement sneak preview
- Tech Corner: Texis' Metamorph compound index
- Subscription/unsubscription and contacts
NEW WEBINATOR KNOWS TO IGNORE 'JUNK'
Everybody gets annoyed by search results that match words in web page headers/footers and navigation menus, as opposed to the pages' unique content. The new Webinator v.4, released in late 2001, can automatically ignore text repeated across multiple pages of a site. Users thus receive more precise search results, without spurious matches on "junk" text. Many other features are new in Webinator 4, including a categorization capability, and a web-based walker admin script, with source code. Try the free version, or for upgrade info, click the "order" link on that page. Texis maintenance customers may request a free upgrade by contacting tech support.Vortex QuickTip: Vortex has more restrictive query defaults than tsql. See "Query Protection" in the manual.
DEVELOPERS' CONFERENCE STARTS APRIL 24
The next Thunderstone Developers' Conference is April 24-26 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Topics include introductory, intermediate, and advanced material, such as Texis design, indexing, optimizing, and Texis Web Script (Vortex) application development. There also will be a seminar devoted to topics requested by attendees. Space is limited, so sign up early to be sure of gaining a spot -- and to get the early-registration discount, too! Conference details
TEXIS CASE STUDY: BOOKSITE.COM
You know about the biggest web bookseller. But did you know that its sales represent less than 8 percent of the U.S. bookselling industry? That there are hundreds of other bookstores now competing online? And that many of them are powered by Thunderstone's Texis software? A substantial group of these other bookstores are served by Texis customer Booksite.com, a company that provides a complete online solution for independent book dealers. Read more
ENHANCEMENT SNEAK PREVIEW
Thunderstone has started work on a Texis enhancement code-named Distributed Data Manager. This will provide "off the shelf" support for splitting Texis databases between machines. Experiments suggest that, for some large applications, this will double performance on the same hardware. We're interested in hearing from Texis customers having larger applications that might benefit from such a facility. We'd like to review your architecture to make sure your needs are taken into account in our design.
Vortex QuickTip: For most queries, adding ROW will save memory, and speed the query.
<SQL ROW>
TECH CORNER: TEXIS' METAMORPH COMPOUND INDEX
For full-text queries in combination with other attributes used for either filtering or sorting, the Metamorph compound index can greatly improve performance. For example Webinator uses the following index to do the search, while also allowing for the sort by Visited:
CREATE METAMORPH INVERTED INDEX xhtmlbodv ON html(Title\Description\Keywords\Meta\Body, Visited);
For a deeper look at how and when to use a Metamorph compound index see our whitepaper.
Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome to
