Dented Reality Notes

I wanted to get some information out here so that people could see what I am working on, and indeed what is running this site's search facility. The icon to the right will take you to a PDF document (13.6Kb) which gives some more details about the approximate process flow of the search supplements, as well as a database schema of what's running the best bets, variants and related terms.

I've been emailed by the author of an upcoming O'Reilly article for techo's regarding my work with a more complete search system. He wants to discuss my integration of Best Bets, a controlled vocabulary and a normal, keyword-based search engine. There's not really a lot to say right now, but I've emailed him back saying that I am definitely interested, so we'll see what happens.

I've had some initial interest from some of the other members of the searchloggers group in the work that I am doing with the search system on this site. The integration of a controlled vocabulary, best bets and a stand-aloone search engine backend appears to be of interest to others as well :)

My hope is that this can be developed into a stand-alone product that could be wrapped around nearly any search system, simply adding to the functionality of said search system. So far things are looking good, but only really for something written in PHP. I would need to add other options for systems written in Perl, C etc.

In the near future, I will be posting database schemas, some notes on implementation and other bits and pieces about how I am attacking the whole process. Keep an eye on things if you are interested :)

Lisa Chan from Stanford emailed me, wanting to know if we could work together on building a search log analysing system. I emailed her back with a stack of the details of stuff that I was planning and haven't heard back... I wonder why not? Maybe she's taken my ideas and is off building it without me?

UPDATE: I still haven't heard from Lisa :P

Just kidding, but I got some details back from Lisa C, and she appears to have some very specialised requirements for her system. I have suggested that it might be better if we work together to develop a "base system" which would include the complete logging functionality, and then she can customise and/or extend the reporting/analysis interface as required.

I think this approach should work quite well, allowing me to collaborate on a logging module, and to refine the database schema, then develop a generic, "useful-across-the-board" analysis interface, which should be capable of being extended easily. Metabase, here I come.