It would be really nice if Koha supported general phrase searches like search engines do. Search for "World Book" with quotes around it should not give the same results as searching for it without quotes. Kyle http://www.kylehall.info Information Technology Crawford County Federated Library System ( http://www.ccfls.org ) On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 11:43 AM, Nicole Engard <nengard@gmail.com> wrote:

On your advanced search page click 'More Options' and then you'll see the Title Phrase option again.  Also the searching docs are here: http://koha-community.org/documentation/3-2-manual/?ch=c7881

Thanks Nicole

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Cindy Murdock Ames <cmurdock@ccfls.org> wrote:

...

Hi all,

Is there a way to search for phrases in the Koha catalog, or to make Koha rank phrases higher than other search results by default?  For example, if I search for "world book", in the expectation of finding World Book Encyclopedia, I get a vast number of search results (about 3,400), because the words "world" and "book" are apparently fairly common in my MARC records.  I'm using 3.2 alpha with zebra, with approximately 350,000 records.  There used to be a title phrase search option in the advanced search, but that doesn't seem to be there anymore.

Thanks! Cindy

-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cindy Murdock Ames IT Services Director Meadville Public Library    | CCFLS http://meadvillelibrary.org | http://ccfls.org

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Thanks, Nicole. I couldn't see it because my syspref for "expandedSearchOption" was set to "don't show". And thanks for the link to the search docs...I didn't know about the search prefixes. :) I agree with Kyle, though...it would be nice if we could do phrase searching with quotes. Cheers, Cindy Nicole Engard wrote:

On your advanced search page click 'More Options' and then you'll see the Title Phrase option again. Also the searching docs are here: http://koha-community.org/documentation/3-2-manual/?ch=c7881

Thanks Nicole

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Cindy Murdock Ames <cmurdock@ccfls.org> wrote:

...

Hi all,

Is there a way to search for phrases in the Koha catalog, or to make Koha rank phrases higher than other search results by default? For example, if I search for "world book", in the expectation of finding World Book Encyclopedia, I get a vast number of search results (about 3,400), because the words "world" and "book" are apparently fairly common in my MARC records. I'm using 3.2 alpha with zebra, with approximately 350,000 records. There used to be a title phrase search option in the advanced search, but that doesn't seem to be there anymore.

Thanks! Cindy

-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cindy Murdock Ames IT Services Director Meadville Public Library | CCFLS http://meadvillelibrary.org | http://ccfls.org

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-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cindy Murdock Ames IT Services Director Meadville Public Library | CCFLS http://meadvillelibrary.org | http://ccfls.org

It seems like it might be a good idea to parse the search string provided by the user (in "Googlese") into Zebra's prefix system. Not only could we handle phrase searching, but we could do a host of other translations (&'s give us some escapement craziness, if I recall). We could also do things like converting ISBN-10's in ISBN-13's or vice versa. It could even be piped into the administrative area to let people turn on and off translations, and make it easy to develop new ones (they'd basically be regex). Sounds like an RFC to write up for 3.4! -Ian On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Cindy Murdock Ames <cmurdock@ccfls.org> wrote:

Hmm, I see that you can do a keyword phrase search with kw,phr= or a title phrase search with ti,phr=.  Cool!  I wonder, could a bit of code be added to the search module to automatically translate a string in quotes to one of those?

Cindy

Cindy Murdock Ames wrote:

...

Thanks, Nicole.  I couldn't see it because my syspref for "expandedSearchOption" was set to "don't show".  And thanks for the link to the search docs...I didn't know about the search prefixes.  :)

I agree with Kyle, though...it would be nice if we could do phrase searching with quotes.

Cheers, Cindy

Nicole Engard wrote:

...

On your advanced search page click 'More Options' and then you'll see the Title Phrase option again.  Also the searching docs are here: http://koha-community.org/documentation/3-2-manual/?ch=c7881

Thanks Nicole

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Cindy Murdock Ames <cmurdock@ccfls.org> wrote:

...

Hi all,

Is there a way to search for phrases in the Koha catalog, or to make Koha rank phrases higher than other search results by default?  For example, if I search for "world book", in the expectation of finding World Book Encyclopedia, I get a vast number of search results (about 3,400), because the words "world" and "book" are apparently fairly common in my MARC records.  I'm using 3.2 alpha with zebra, with approximately 350,000 records.  There used to be a title phrase search option in the advanced search, but that doesn't seem to be there anymore.

Thanks! Cindy

-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cindy Murdock Ames IT Services Director Meadville Public Library    | CCFLS http://meadvillelibrary.org | http://ccfls.org

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-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cindy Murdock Ames IT Services Director Meadville Public Library    | CCFLS http://meadvillelibrary.org | http://ccfls.org

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It would be good to give folks the option on install, Zebra or Solr. Would lead to a more modular design, and give folks more control over their system. Of course, that would introduce yet another layer of complexity when troubleshooting search bugs, but I think that's an acceptable trade off. Does anyone disagree? -Ian On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 9:34 AM, Nicole Engard <nengard@gmail.com> wrote:

I like the idea that developers have had on the Koha IRC chanel - to replace Zebra is Solr -- that would probably solve this problem as well!

Nicole

...

It seems like it might be a good idea to parse the search string provided by the user (in "Googlese") into Zebra's prefix system. Not only could we handle phrase searching, but we could do a host of other translations (&'s give us some escapement craziness, if I recall). We could also do things like converting ISBN-10's in ISBN-13's or vice versa. It could even be piped into the administrative area to let people turn on and off translations, and make it easy to develop new ones (they'd basically be regex).

Sounds like an RFC to write up for 3.4!

-Ian

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Cindy Murdock Ames <cmurdock@ccfls.org> wrote:

...

Hmm, I see that you can do a keyword phrase search with kw,phr= or a title phrase search with ti,phr=. Cool! I wonder, could a bit of code be added to the search module to automatically translate a string in quotes to one of those?

Cindy

Cindy Murdock Ames wrote:

...

Thanks, Nicole. I couldn't see it because my syspref for "expandedSearchOption" was set to "don't show". And thanks for the

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 8:19 AM, Ian Walls <ian.walls@bywatersolutions.com> wrote: link

...

...

...

to the search docs...I didn't know about the search prefixes. :)

I agree with Kyle, though...it would be nice if we could do phrase searching with quotes.

Cheers, Cindy

Nicole Engard wrote:

...

On your advanced search page click 'More Options' and then you'll see the Title Phrase option again. Also the searching docs are here: http://koha-community.org/documentation/3-2-manual/?ch=c7881

Thanks Nicole

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Cindy Murdock Ames < cmurdock@ccfls.org> wrote:

...

Hi all,

Is there a way to search for phrases in the Koha catalog, or to make Koha rank phrases higher than other search results by default? For example, if I search for "world book", in the expectation of finding World Book Encyclopedia, I get a vast number of search results (about 3,400), because the words "world" and "book" are apparently fairly common in my MARC records. I'm using 3.2 alpha with zebra, with approximately 350,000 records. There used to be a title phrase search option in the advanced search, but that doesn't seem to be there anymore.

Thanks! Cindy

-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cindy Murdock Ames IT Services Director Meadville Public Library | CCFLS http://meadvillelibrary.org | http://ccfls.org

_______________________________________________ Koha-devel mailing list Koha-devel@lists.koha.org http://lists.koha.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel

-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cindy Murdock Ames IT Services Director Meadville Public Library | CCFLS http://meadvillelibrary.org | http://ccfls.org

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Hi, 2010/3/1 Jesse <pianohacker@gmail.com>:

Besides, this could be a long-awaiting chance to finally get rid of Zebra. The obfuscated code and quirky architecture make adding features and troubleshooting problems incredibly difficult, among other problems. If Solr is genuinely better, why keep Zebra?

To avoid *requiring* the full Tomcat & Java stack with every Koha installation, along with its obfuscated code and quirky configuration system. :) This isn't meant as a serious knock against Solr. I'm just pointing out that there would be tradeoffs if we were to just abandon Zebra, including losing a slim, fast search engine capable of indexing arbitrary XML that speaks Z39.50 and SRU/W natively with fewer moving parts than Solr. In a perfect world, I agree that it would be best to settle on one search engine and eliminate an installation option, but I don't think that we'll ever get there; there will always be another external engine that is newer/faster/shinier/better-supported than whatever Koha uses at the time. It's also important to identify the source of the problem - in the case of phrase searching, Zebra is perfectly capable of doing it, but there are a number of flaws in C4::Search's notion of query parsing that stand in the way and that would still apply if we ripped out Zebra and replaced it with Solr. Refactoring C4::Search in 3.4 will get us most of the way, and doing so with the idea of supporting Solr would keep us honest as we redesign the API. However, I would be quite content if the end result for 3.4 was simply a cleaner front end to Zebra. Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton gmcharlt@gmail.com

On 2 March 2010 09:57, Nicole Engard <nengard@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 3:49 PM, Galen Charlton <gmcharlt@gmail.com> wrote:

...

In a perfect world, I agree that it would be best to settle on one search engine and eliminate an installation option, but I don't think that we'll ever get there; there will always be another external engine that is newer/faster/shinier/better-supported than whatever Koha uses at the time.  It's also important to identify the source of the problem - in the case of phrase searching, Zebra is perfectly capable of doing it, but there are a number of flaws in C4::Search's notion of query parsing that stand in the way and that would still apply if we ripped out Zebra and replaced it with Solr.

Refactoring C4::Search in 3.4 will get us most of the way, and doing so with the idea of supporting Solr would keep us honest as we redesign the API.  However, I would be quite content if the end result for 3.4 was simply a cleaner front end to Zebra.

Correct me if I'm wrong- but I've been told that Zebra is the reason the facets work the way they do - and there are issues there as well. I don't find the only issue with Zebra to be phrase searching, but also boolean searches, the ordering of the facets, the inability to show the number of hits next to facets or order them in alpha order ... and maybe even more I'm forgetting now.

But I do agree that there will be problems no matter what - or maybe not problems but challenges - this is the nature of technology.

You are wrong :) The problems are with how we are using Zebra, (which if we want to blame someone other than who wrote C4::Search we could blame on the zebra docs I guess) I have no intention of tossing Zebra out and replacing it totally with Solr, but being able to support both (and more potentially like xapian) is a major goal of the rewrite of C4::Search. Zebra is sometimes hard to figure out, but it is fast, and it pretty much just works Chris

Galen Charlton a écrit :

Hi,

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 3:57 PM, Nicole Engard <nengard@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Correct me if I'm wrong- but I've been told that Zebra is the reason the facets work the way they do - and there are issues there as well.

It's more correct to say that since Koha's facets *don't* use Zebra's native facet functionality that they don't work as well as they should.

Well actually, I have made some tests on zebra facets. And found many reasons why we could/should not use them. Especially because diacritics are messed around. Even if simple charmap files. I donot even talk with icu configuration files. So It is not only the fault of C4/Search.pm but also poorly supported feature in zebra. I was told that pazpar2 was better handling facets and diacritics but I took no time to test that. So whatever search engine we choose we would have to enhance the support so that every feature we announce is really well documented and achieved. Moreover, we should have some way to setup the facets and indexes so that ppl can add or remove those quite easily. This is not a problem of Search Engine, this is a matter of Koha configuration and Koha collaboration with search Engine configuration. But at the moment Koha Configuration is so tighted with zebra, that it would be dangerous to change. But I just want to remind that whatever the search engine, it is not its name or its "ggl trend" which makes the configuration or the feature works. We invested much time in taming the zebra. We would still have to invest : (dom configuration is one thing we donot use thoroughly. We could also try and index items, subscriptions and acquisition data.) But there are also some features that are clearly missing (left truncation for icu, facets). And I think that changing to pazpar2 or to solr could require quite the same amount of work. One big point for solr though is that documentation is really accessible online, and that the project lists are pretty much active. My 2 cents. -- Henri-Damien LAURENT

...

I don't find the only issue with Zebra to be phrase searching, but also boolean searches, the ordering of the facets, the inability to show the number of hits next to facets or order them in alpha order ... and maybe even more I'm forgetting now.

All of those issues have more to do with C4::Search than Zebra itself.

...

But I do agree that there will be problems no matter what - or maybe not problems but challenges - this is the nature of technology.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not speaking as an apologist for Zebra, except possibly to counter-balance what I think are some mischaracterizations of where the problems lie. I would be quite happy to have Koha work with Solr as well.

Regards,

Galen