Spotlight

[Robert Brenstein]

>On May 26, 2005, at 2:42 PM, Lynn Fredricks wrote:
>
>>Hi Jon,
>>
>>>Hi all. Has anyone explored the possibility of making a V2
>>>database searchable with Spotlight?
>>
>>Can you explain tangible benefits (other than it would be cool)? Yes, its
>>something we've talked about, but I would like to get an understanding of
>>why people would want it.
>
>Eventually, I expect that users will come to expect the ability to 
>search data using Spotlight, so applications that use Valentina 
>might be at a competitive disadvantage.
>
>--------------
>Charles Yeomans

But then Valentina is not the only one facing that issue. I suspect 
that sooner or later Apple will provide an API or SDK to extend 
Spotlight's capabilities in indexing/searching files that Spotlight 
can't touch at the moment.

My guess is that they included SqLite as the engine for Spotlight, 
and if so, it may be a matter of allowing Spotlight to use alternate 
engines through some adaptors, for example.

On the other hand, allowing Spotlight to do undiscriminate searches 
through relational database files may not be so useful (think .ind 
files of valentina). I think that there would have to be a way for 
each database to identify what is searchable and what not.

Robert