Forums / Support / Searching optimization...?

Searching optimization...?

by TedB @
Okay, sorry if this is a dumb question, but it's not clear to me which means it's probably not clear to others so maybe this would be the place to have it explained.... The objective is to minimize the bytes used when doing a Refresh or initially downloading the news headers as this can be very expensive (Mb and RAM usage) on some groups with millions of messages....

Help says use a Global Filter in Settings/Search Strings/ that matches what you're looking for to minimize RAM usage. Cool. When I set the Global filter for .r , it only displays the headers that match eg. .rar, .r001 etc. :) Great!

Then in my main Search window, I assume that typing "Who" into the search box would find me only the subset of headers like "dr.Who" "Who cares" etc. but it doesn't work that way....all I get is everything back again, the search string is ignored.... does this make sense? i.e. the Global search String seems to override the local Search string that I type in.... am I missing something? :confused:

I know can filter on "not who" and it works, but not for multiple search words that I am looking for plus it's clumsy. Opposite way to the way I do business :D
 

BinaryBoy's reply to TedB #1095 @

When I set the Global filter for .r , it only displays the headers that match eg. .rar, .r001 etc.

You mean Global Search? I'd expect it to do the opposite of what you're describing. A Global Filter of ".r" should block .rar and .r001.

Here's the rule: A subject is added to the results if it matches ANY search string and NONE of the filters. Does that explain it?

I know can filter on "not who" and it works, but not for multiple search words that I am looking for plus it's clumsy. Opposite way to the way I do business

Yes, it's clumsy but it does work on multiple search words. To limit the headers to those matching your keywords, set a filter to: !who & !whatever & !bleh

Then you can search for a subset using a search string.
 

TedB's reply to BinaryBoy #1096 @

oOpS, yes I meant Search above :o

Ok then, so in this scenario I have for instance, looking at a.b.dvd I download 1.07 Million headers with Global search off.
With my regular search string of:
.exe .r .zip .ace .pdf .0 .mp .avi .nfo .divx .par .p .vob .ifo .nzb
I get 8609 "unique" headers (I only see 1st instance of each)
With a wildcard asterisk search I see 9088 headers. Not that much different.

Since I downloaded them all anyway before the Global Search could have filtered the junk out, then the only difference is the final "search tab" stored list of headers is smaller therefore using less RAM for those of us who don't have a lot.

What I would have liked is for the Global Search to limit my headers list to what I find globally interesting (i.e. the search string above), and then any string I type in the main Search Tab Search field would just return a subset containing that string (i.e Dr.Who.rar, whocares.zip etc.) Sounds more logical to me.... my first instinct is to just type what I'm really looking for into that box :D

Does this make sense to y'all..... Is it a religious thing, or would this change be possible in a future release, maybe?
 

BinaryBoy's reply to TedB #1097 @

There are several points against this feature:

1. Every feature added exclusively to 1.9x slows down 2.0 development. For example, I'm working on another search optimization that applies to both 1.9x and 2.0. That would have to be delayed.

2. It will cause problems for people who forget to change their search string to * before refreshing. The flood of support emails will say something like "Outlook Express shows xxxx.jpg but Binary Boy can't find it!" The fix would be to delete an individual cache file and update the binboy.bbcx file so headers would be re-downloaded.

3. Automating the fix in 2 would add more delays.

If there's more demand, I'll consider it further. Otherwise, I'll only consider it for a future version.
 

TedB's reply to BinaryBoy #1099 @

Oh, no problem, and I wouldn't want to slow down dvelopmet, that's way more important.... As for the "blank search" problem, I'd say it's unlikely anyone would ever deliberately search for nothing, so a blank search string "anywhere" should default to * as a feature, effectively fixing that issue.

Love to see it in V2 though {"_"}.....Keep up the good work!!!