OK - Big improvement in the new search engine. Almost as good as the original one used to be. At least it finds stuff without generating an error message after you sit there for a minute and a half.

I'll take it.
Thanks for helping all of us out with this.

John

I'll second John's post. I couldn't get any hits, just error message that search was too broad, when I typed a single word, such as 'copyright'. Worked a treat with the new engine.
Tom

I just tried the new search engine, and my test showed that it is still completely unacceptable. It does not work.

I typed "dvd mpeg-2 render" for the search, restricted the search to my user name, asked it to look for ALL the search terms, restricted the search to the Vegas forum only, but asked it to look over the entire duration of the database.

Seventy (70) seconds later, I got the "search too broad" error.

Sony, GIVE UP on your home-brew software and simply purchase something that already works. I go to forums with 10x the message density in this forum (actually, more than that) and they are responsive and the search works in a few seconds. It makes absolutely no sense to divert resources to build something like this that isn't part of your core business, especially when it appears you don't have any expertise in this area.

John, did you use the new search engine Forum Admin linked to?
I just tried it using your search terms. It took about 30 sec. to bring up the first page.
I stopped looking after 6 pages of results.

My only complaint is that I'd like to see the "Search in subject only" returned as this cut out a lot of (potentially useless) clutter.

Mike

John, did you use the new search engine Forum Admin linked to?Yes. That was the whole point in my post, namely that even with the changes they are attempting to make, it still isn't working. Also, 30 seconds is ridiculously long. Google can search the entire Internet and give you a result in under one second. Of course they own half the computers on the planet and suck more power than Hoover dam provides, but the point is that to do a search on the ridiculously small database that comprises this tiny forum is something that should be done in under one second. Period. Anything else is unacceptable.

As noted above, I have to agree with John on this one. It still isn't up to par--nowhere close to what it needs to be.

Why not admit that the current software isn't working?

Forumadmin, is there a reason why you guys don't just go and implement vBulletin or Invision Power Board or something like that?

I just tried the new search engine, and my test showed that it is still completely unacceptable. It does not work.

I typed "dvd mpeg-2 render" for the search, restricted the search to my user name, asked it to look for ALL the search terms, restricted the search to the Vegas forum only, but asked it to look over the entire duration of the database.

Seventy (70) seconds later, I got the "search too broad" error.

==========
I used the original search engine all the time. I can tell you without hesitation that typing "dvd mpeg-2 render" would not have worked with the original search engine with the "All" parameter. It wasn't perfect, but it worked if you rearranged words and limited the number of words.
I am not saying that the new one is perfect, but it is a far cry from the totally useless version we have been putting up with for months and it seems almost as good as the old one - almost.

John

I am not saying that the new one is perfect, but it is a far cry from the totally useless version we have been putting up with for months and it seems almost as good as the old one - almost.But my point was that the new search engine didn't work either, and failed exactly like the old one did.

[Edit] For grins, I just tried the exact same test, and this time the new search engine did return a result. But oops, I just realized that I had accepted the idiotic default of "one month" for the search range. So I increased to one year. Got results in about eight seconds. Then, I increased to two years. Wait, wait, wait, ... about 35 seconds later, I got results, and they did indeed go back two years. So, I cranked the timeframe all the way up to "all time," went and brewed some coffee, and measured how long it took.

Waiting .... waiting ... waiting ... waiting ...

One minute and thirty-five seconds later, I did indeed -- finally -- get a result. This is the first time I have been able to search the entire database since last summer (or before). However, what kind of search algorithm could possibly scale this badly??? The usual approach to big databases is to use an inverted index. Perhaps this doesn't work with a dynamic database that is changing rapidly. However, every database search I have ever built, and certainly every database search I have ever done has had very little sensitivity to the size of the database. It is certainly true that going from two years to eight years (which I think is roughly the "all time" range) should not make the search time go up exponentially, especially since there were fewer posts per day the further back in time you go.

So, I stick by my earlier statement that this search function is broken and that even the new search is not acceptable. If I were the engineering manager, I would not allow this product to be shipped.

"Google can search the entire Internet and give you a result in under one second."

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Actually, that's not a bad idea. I haven't gone through this entire thread to see if this has already been suggested, but isn't there some free code that SMS could implement so that the Google servers could index and search the SMS database? I've seen such a search service offered elsewhere.

EDIT:
Oops, I should read my posts more carefully. Try saying "seen such a search service" 10 times real fast.

Yeah, I think you used to be able to use the Google "search this site" feature to retrieve posts, but I may be wrong. Letting Google do it would sure be an easy way out, and free.

Here's a site-specific search for . The search doesn't get into the forums.

There is also a Google site search service that Sony could implement, but I don't think that's the right solution.

Yeah, for the Google site-specific search to work, Sony has to give the Google crawler access to the content of these forums. There are other things that can be done where you use the Google technology to do your site search. The first is free, for sure. Don't know about the second. As I state before, I think either one would be a great idea for Sony to do, although it would be even better to scrap this home-brew (even though I know lots of people like it, mostly because they are used to it) and instead use one of the three or four commercial BBS/forum packages.

My burning question is why can't the forum search engines (any of them) use specific keyword phrases. For example, if I wanted to do a search for "shutter angle" I would get a bizillion hits on "shutter" and a mere handful on "angle".

Quick update: We just completed a transition to new database hardware for the forums. We're hoping this change provides some relief while we continue to work on improvements to the search engine.

Thank you so much, ForumAdmin! Everything goes much faster now.

Jøran Toresen

As of this moment (4:56 p.m. PDT), the forum is fast. I just tried a search, restricted to the Vegas forum and my user name, going back through all of time, for the word "TIFF." Took about ten seconds and gave me full results.

I used the search button at the top of this page (and not the "beta" search link that was provided a few weeks ago).

This is very welcome indeed. Thank you!

Zippy-dee-do-dah-day!

Thanks!

Tim Robertson

THANK YOU, ForumAdmin. The forum is pretty danged zippy.

Huh! Just read this one - and yes thanks MADISON-SONY. Very much appreciated.

Grazie

- if a swimmer made an improvement like this, there'd be drug tests!