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Drupal Search: Where are we? Where are we going?

robertDouglass's picture
Submitted by robertDouglass on Wed, 07/02/2008 - 19:08.

Session recording

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Placement
Session time: 
08/28/2008 - 09:00 - 08/28/2008 - 10:30
Conference booklet summary and bio
Article for conference booklet: 
A solid search strategy is a critical part of any successful website deployment. Fortunately for Drupal, more options are available than ever before. This presentation will cover the advancements that have been made in Drupal core search and touch on the roadmap for further core development. Then discussion will turn to the third party search options that are available for enhancing Drupal search. The following tools will be presented: - Enhancing search with the Views module - Solr and the ApacheSolr module - Xapian (now in use on Drupal.org) - Sphinx - The RDF framework, SPARQL, and the semantic search module. After attending this presentation you will have an overview of the best tools available for building Drupal search solutions, and a basis for evaluating them. If you are in the process of planning or building a search solution, or if you are a developer hoping to join forces and help with existing efforts, please attend this session.
Bios for conference booklet: 
Robert Douglass, author of "Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and Wordpress" (Apress, 2005), is Senior Drupal Advisor for Acquia. His Drupal passions include search technologies, performance tuning, and most recently, using Drupal as a DocBook XML authoring platform.

Overview

Google has shown us that search matters. Drupal's core search has strengths as well as weaknesses. What are they and how are the weaknesses being addressed? What new search options have emerged, and how does one evaluate them?

Agenda

* Core search in Drupal 7: What needs to be done?
* Minnesota Search Sprint: What got accomplished and where does it go from here?
* Xapian, Sphinx and ApacheSolr: With so many third-party options to choose from, how does one evaluate and decide?
* Search and Drupal.org: What special needs does Drupal.org have, and how can we improve things now and in the future?

Goals

Increase focus on improving core Drupal search. Increase awareness of alternative solutions. Increase awareness of different search features, such as faceted searching. Encourage more collaboration amongst developers.

Resources

* http://drupal.org/project/apachesolr
* http://drupal.org/project/xapian
* http://www.sphinxsearch.com/
* http://groups.drupal.org/node/4102 (Search group on g.d.o.)

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http://davidseth.myopenid.com/'s picture

Semantic search

Submitted by http://davidset... on Thu, 08/14/2008 - 02:47.

I am really looking forward to hearing about RDF and the Semantic search module.

Here in Australia we are doing quite a bit with Drupal, Semantic Mediawiki and Semantic Web tools.