THUNDERSTONE NEWS

July 2002 - Archive

CONTENTS

• New Features: Javascript crawling
• Customer Spotlight: Wordtracker.com
• Tech Corner: Data Types - VARCHAR vs CHAR
• Subscription/unsubscription and contacts

If you index websites containing JavaScript, then the latest additions to Thunderstone's web indexing programs will be of great assistance. Texis now discovers text and links generated by JavaScript that are invisible to other crawlers. This allows you to search sites that have JavaScript-only navigation, as well as verify all the links that are generated by JavaScript.

JavaScript crawling will be a separate "plug-in" module to Thunderstone's standard "dowalk" script available on July 9th. We are offering it for evaluation as part of the free Webinator until September 30. Just download Webinator after July 9th and try it out!

Do you buy keywords on search engines? "You probably are competing with too many other sites that use the same words," says Mike Mindel, founder of Wordtracker, which is based in London. "That dilutes your effort to differentiate your offering. And web users probably are searching related terms that could describe your business, but that you neglected to incorporate into your site."

Wordtracker has built a highly successful business dedicated to identifying which keywords are both popular and have the least competition. One of the most technically sophisticated services of its kind, Wordtracker relies on Texis to perform many important functions.

Read more

When designing a table in Texis where you need to store text data, you have the choice of several different datatypes. In this issue we will compare the VARCHAR and CHAR types, which are used for small to medium size data that is frequently accessed. A future issue will explore types that are more appropriate for larger blocks of data that are not frequently accessed.

One difference between Texis and many other databases is that a VARCHAR can hold arbitrary amounts of text. It is not limited by the declared size of the field. In contrast the CHAR field is limited to the declared size, and always uses the declared size to store the data.

For most applications VARCHAR is the most appropriate type. However when you know that you will be storing the same amount of text in each and every field you may want to consider the CHAR type, as it does not need to store the size of the data with every row.