[Xapian-discuss] Ranking and term proximity

[goran kent]

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 10:01 AM, Tim Brody <tdb2 at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
> A Google search for "xapian proximity weight" finds this:
> http://lists.tartarus.org/pipermail/xapian-discuss/2006-December/003037.html

Crikey, NEAR should be implicit with a general-purpose search engine,
IMHO.  However, I confess, I wasn't even aware of NEAR, so I'll be
doing some digg'n.

 (foo AND bar) OR "foo bar"

is simply a non-starter for better weighting based on term proximity.
"foo bar" is a phrase search which is a performance blackhole in
xapian.  For any kind of public-facing app where customers perform
searches you have to disable phrase searching else you'll be fired...
:D

btw, I'm not anti-xapian, by any means.  I love it and I think the
devs are doing an amazing job.  I just get the "feeling" that the
focus seems to not be on maximum search performance.

That's like Ferrari deciding to focus on the paintwork.