Ricky

Is the search ever going to work again ? I, along with loads of others would find it very helpful. Post a reply if you would like to see it working again, and hopefully the number of replies will help to encourage whoever has the responsibility to get the search operational again. to get all into gear.

So who all wants to see it working ????????

Cheers !

Ricky !

Jolly Green Monster 2

We all do but there are problems with it which Simon (webmaster)
hasn't been able to fix or hasn't had the time involved with fixing it yet etc.. IMHO...

This question has been posted many times and if the search was working I could point you in the direction of webmasters responses


JGM

scooby_si

Only option is to set the box in top right 2 as many topics, ie days, as u fancy looking at & trawl yer way thru till u find wot u seek
Si

Harry Potter

or search boring bbs

AndiThompson

The domand on the server while searching through a massive database like the one the BBS is huge, and would put the server under pressure and use quite a bit of bandwidth.

David_Wallis

if everyone is really wanting to see search come back then why dont the pledge money to buy either a better server, or another server and rackspace... and then get simon to possibly replicate the database nightly to another box and then search an offline database... (fair enough would be a day out of date but so?)

Ideas, Simon, would you care to comment.. this could also possibly provide space to upload files to as well???

David

merlin

Searching a massive db can be done although of course there's a cost.

I know Simon has invested a tremendous amount of effort into the software behind this BBS which I for one am very grateful for. However there are tried and tested off the shelf solutions which support larger BBSs than this and include search facilities. anandtech is the largest that I know of. Details of the software running anandtech can be found at here. The figures are scary - 92000 registered users, 1.2 million page views per day, 20 servers and 3 million messages in the db. Even with 20 servers anandtech has had problems with search performance. Recently they've disabled full text search but you can still search on a phrase. For $2.50 full text search is supported.

I know when I was buying my scoob, being able to search the scoobynet db was a great help and I miss it now. Maybe a modest subscription for a full search facility could be the way forward here.

[Edited by merlin - 6/11/2002 8:17:52 PM]

MrDeference

True, but you have got to ask about the pattern of use of a BBS search, and the truth is it doesn't have to be 100% accurate, it can take an age (by design - as you can read relevant threads whilst the search is ongoing).
Most searches will have repeating phrases (people look for similar things often) and most searches will be looking for well trafficed threads.
If you posted a search request and it worked overnight (block search in the quiet time) and emailed you a thread list that would be a step forwards, without a huge server hit.

MrDeference

Neil,
Please expand... what was happening?

scooby_si

I think he's saying microsoft is a greedy format, or wotever the term is, without being slanderous etc so i think we can safely say so far that search aint guna happen kuz it needs huge resources So if u desperately need sumin time 4 da manual search or the joys of reposted questions
Si

Neil Smalley

I don't remember all the ins and outs. But I do know that a lot of people spent a lot of time nailing down the cause that the main culprit seemed to be this 'feature' rather than Scoobynet.

The people who did the investigations really know their stuff and the issues was fully repeatable once it was understood what was going on. Unfortunatley there was(at the time, dunno now) no work around so search had to be taken down so scoobynet did'nt crash four times a day.

If search was working I could tell you the thread that explained it all, since it is'nt give simon a mail and ask him.

boomer

If we got rid of the Muppet Forum there would be so much spare capacity that we could search to our hearts content!!

mb

David_Wallis

Would certainly be interested... I was under the impression that this ran on MySQL not something like SQL Server???

David

scooby_si

Yo Boomer do u not realise wot wood happen if those reprabates were set loose into the important forums lol
Si

gregh

I'd love to hear an official answer from SDB, search was one of the best features of Scoobynet IMHO, and it is badly missed.

One of the best selling points of Scoobynet is it's knowledge over many years, without search this is lost.

Personally I'd prefer things like VIP etc to be scrapped in order to get search working consistently.

regards,

greg

MrDeference

Neil,
Wild guess time. Does the following sound familiar?
ISAPI component running in IIS process, locks / dies and takes IIS with it?

Neil Smalley

No idea. I was'nt one of the people who looked at it. I only got my info 2nd,3rd or 4th hand..

Honestly, if you can help mail Simon. He knows all the ins and outs.

Neil Smalley

Incidentally.

The muppet forum's bandwidth is a small fraction of the scoobynet total. Getting rid of it would'nt bring search back, as if I recall correctly it's not a bandwidth or capacity issue, same goes for VIP lists.

If however you have any bright ideas, drop Simon an email(see above).

MrDeference

Neil. Gotcha.
I did mail Simon, and didn't hear anything. That's why I don't think it is a resourcing issue, but a technical one; One I want to understand, as being a sad programmer, I may hit the same problem soon...

Neil Smalley

Simon is usually horrendously busy before a WRC event, so give it time. Mail him again, as i'm sure he'd welcome whatever input/ideas you have.

MrDeference

Neil,
Sure I am not that impatient - the mail was sent a while ago. Running scared of coming over like Harry Enfield's "Only ME!" character, so didn't push it.

Crispin

if SDB wants to post details of his search problems there are loads of MS bods who would share their thoughts i'm sure....two heads and all that....

EvilBevel

<this post was intentionally left blank>

Anyhow, MrDeference, no, it was not an ISAPI problem. Can't say any more really, so would have to refer you to SDB as well.

</cringe>

Neil Smalley

LOL@MrDeference

My own personal opinion is that I'm Not sure publishnig scoobynet's inner workings is a good idea on a public BBS. Yours and others intentions may be honourable and wanting to help, but some others may not be. SN has suffered through denial of service attacks before and giving too much detail is just inviting such things again.

It's sad and should'nt be like that, but in the end it's Simons call. Hence me pointing suggestions to him, rather than me who does'nt know his ASP from his elbow.

David_Wallis

if anybody would be able to get it working MrDeference woudld... shame he would try and re-write in .net c# though..

David

MrDeference

LOL @ David + Neil.
Sure. Theo's post says it all I think (BTW Theo, nice garden ). Not to be discussed in public - eminently understandable.

ex-webby

Hi All

A bit of background.

Theo put in a substantial ammount of his own time to test what was causing the bbs to hang every now and then. With the aid of a test tool which we ran on the server, he found it to be the search facility.

Because there was not the time right then, we switched to search facility off until a solution could be found.

I then did some research with the help of Theo and also Lee Christie and found out what the solution is (basically it was down to bad programming / database work on my part).

The only problem since then has been finding the time to impliment the solution.

Theo has offered tremendous support, but unfortunately it has not been possible from an adminitration point of view to impliment his solutions. We should all be grateful for his efforts though.

Shaun has been kicking my but lately to get search, the charity donations, and a couple of other things happening and as soon as I get back from greece, we are going to make it all happen.

Apologies for not having it up sooner, but rest assured this is only temporary and will be back up as soon as time allows.

All the best

Simon

MrDeference

Cheers Simon.
Cleared that one up in one fell swoop.

I don't know what you do at the WRC, but am jealous. Enjoy the Acropolis...

And if you do fancy migrating the BBS to C# + SQL drop us a line

ex-webby

MrDeference

I meant to mention in my last message.. thank you very much for you input. I regret that I don't remember seeing your email, but it is possible I got it mid way through a rally where there don't seem to be enough milliseconds in a second to get everything done! deepest apologies.

All is going well here so far, thank you.

All the best

Simon

MrDeference

Don't mention it I have enough trouble with Scoobynet interupting my working day, and I only post on it!