Spotlight search

[Thorsten Hohage]

Hi Erne,

On 2008-03-03, at 12:27, Erne wrote:

> is there a way to let Spotlight find contents in a Vale DB file?
>
> Just curious (haven't read Spotlight APIs yet so I don't know if it  
> could be possible and how)


I asked the same and wrote even many more lines with thoughts and  
ideas. But to be honest there is (currently) no way and this is due to  
Apple!!!

While Apple offers plug-in APIs for so many things, Apple didn't offer  
any thing for Spotlight when thinking about Databases! Btw. this is  
the reason why they internally changed the format of the iCal or Mail  
files (=databases!). I talked several months ago with somebody from  
Apple Developer Relations about this issue and he mentioned that Apple  
_might_ be thinking about / working on a solution they need for their  
own apps. Especially since Spotlight in 10.5 is now able to search a  
server (through remote request the spotlight DB on the server, not  
"searching" the server for real).


So for now if you must deliver a spotlight solution, you need to write  
all data needed to an additional file (preferred per record) and then  
write the appropriate plugin for spotlight for these files. But this  
only make sense, if you not try to store the whole db inside these  
files.

regards

Thorsten Hohage
--
objectmanufactur.com - Hamburg,Germany