Spotlight

[Sims, John]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: valentina-beta-bounces at lists.macserve.net 
> [mailto:valentina-beta-bounces at lists.macserve.net] On Behalf 
> Of Robert Brenstein
> Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2005 3:24 PM
> To: Valentina Beta
> Subject: Re: Spotlight
> 
> 
> >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

In addition, the very nature of relational databases would make such
searches difficult to make meaningful.  Even if Spotlight could search
through the tables, it is not going to know how to resolve the
relationships between tables to provide useful information.  Somebody (I
think Kem) mentioned archiving e-mails.  I would suspect that this
information would be broken up across multiple tables as it should be if
you are using a relational database.  I'm not sure what good it would do
for Spotlight to find "concert tickets" in the message of an e-mail
without being able to provide information such as who sent it and when.
I suspect that Robert is correct about an API/SDK but I think, even
then, it will be difficult to Paradigma to incorporate in a useful way
as it is we, the developers, who are in control of our data structures.

Just my 2 cents before I go home for the day.

Take care.

-John