[Xapian-devel] Re: Xapian jni

[Ralf Mattes]

On Fri, 2006-12-29 at 02:43 +0000, Olly Betts wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 29, 2006 at 03:22:51AM +0100, Ralf Mattes wrote:
> > On Thu, 2006-12-28 at 23:46 +0000, Olly Betts wrote:
> > > On Thu, Dec 28, 2006 at 11:45:09AM -0500, Alex Kushkuley wrote:
> > > > What do you think about Xapian web service?
> > > 
> > > It would probably be useful to have.  I think it would be best to
> > > implement as a layer on top of Xapian (similarly to how the bindings are
> > > in many ways).
> > 
> > Hmm, isn't a Webservice provider pretty much an application?
> 
> Well, an application is a layer on top of Xapian!
> 
> > I think Xapian should focus on what it is: a framework to _build_ such
> > applications.
> 
> I think we're actually in violent agreement.  This is why I think such a
> thing should be a layer on top of Xapian.

Ok, yes. 

> > Yes, but what all these seem to lack is the xml parser for the
> > request :-)
> 
> I did describe them as `"web service"-ish'!

Ah, cool trick. I have to try that on my customers some time ;-)
Seriously, request parsing is probably the most tricky part of
webservices - and unfortunately most web service libraries i know of
will send xml. Anyone who's written som WebDAV client (or, shudder,
server) will know what nightmare xml protocols can be -- not because of
xml per se, but because of what half-knowledgeable programmers can make
out of it.
  
> Alex wrote "web service" with a lowercase "w" and "s", so I took his
> question in a fairly broad context.  There's no inherent reason why
> everything has to be XML, that's just an implementation detail really.
> 
> > Iff xml output is all you're after that my shaggy mod-xapian might count
> > as an implementation as well. It actually only creates xml output that
> > then can be handled to some xslt-transforming module.
> 
> If I'd known about it, I'd have mentioned it too!  Got a URL?  I get
> just a single hit for `mod-xapian' on Google, and that hit isn't very
> enlightening...

Hey, that's funny. Some remnants of our old search engine stuck in
hyperspace. Unfortunately we're in the midst of a major server shuffling
(which explains why i'm up that late) so the subversion server isn't
reachable. If you just want to play you can tweak your /etc/hosts and
add:

  217.13.68.167 suche.zeit.de

to it and then point your browser at:

 http://suche.zeit.de/suche?q=Frankfurt+Flughafen+Airport&op=OR

which will give you the customer view - or at:
 
 http://suche.zeit.de/fluche?q=Frankfurt+Flughafen+Airport&op=OR

which shows the bare xml as emitted by the module.
I'm not shure the code is of much use - even so i tried to keep the
module as generic as possible there are some customer specific thing in
it. But as with all our stuff - it's released under GPL so use it if you
want to. 

 Cheers, RalfD


> Cheers,
>     Olly