Spotlight

[Erik Mueller-Harder]

On May 26, 2005, at 12:52 PM, jda wrote:

> I'm not sure of what value it has, either, but some of my users  
> want to be able to do Spotlight searches that find text in V2  
> records. This might be of value if they have many different  
> databases, and want to find one that contains a certain name or term.

Without resorting to hacks, Spotlight is unable to search megalithic  
files meaningfully; hence, for example, Mail.app is now storing each  
message in its own file, rather than within a large .mbox file.   
AddressBook is doing a similar thing (though I understand it is  
storing its data twice:  once in a database file, and once in  
discrete person files.

So, other than the case you mention of being able to find *which* V2  
database contains a string (assuming it's stored as clear text), I  
can't imagine anything very useful being possible.  You could, of  
course, write out duplicate data in text files, a la AddressBook, but  
you'd further have to design your program in such a way that it would  
react to Spotlight's (or the Finder's) request to open the file by  
having it then display the full associated record from the V2 database.

Considering how slow and clumsy Spotlight seems to be (at least on my  
2.5GHz DP G5!) and how lightning-quick and flexible V2 is, I think  
I'll be pursuing other options for now.

-- Erik