using cfsearch with an external verity collection

[DaveXG]

Hi,

I am trying to search a Verity collection which is created and indexed by the full Verity product and not by the version of Verity shipped with ColdFusion.

According to the documentation, all I need to do is use the full path to the index as the Collection and set External to Yes. So, I have this:

<cfsearch name=&quot;turnip&quot; collection=&quot;/Data/Turnip/Content&quot; type=&quot;Simple&quot; external=&quot;Yes&quot; criteria=&quot;whatever&quot;>

But this gives an error and the only Error Diagnostic Information is Error occurred in tag CFSEARCH

This is with ColdFusion Server 4.5 on Solaris.

Any suggestions? They'd be much appreciated.

 

[GunJack]

Hey Dave,

I'm assuming that "Content" is the name of the collection and not the last directory in the path. If so, I would try adding this collection through the CF admin and see if that works. According to the docs, what you have should work although I'm not that familiar with Verity to know if your "criteria" attribute is valid. I would try removing it and see if that makes a difference as well.

Also, is your path a relative one or is "/Data" a root level directory? If this is relative to the CF collections directory, I would try making it a full path from the root.

Ports of CF to the Unixes usually have a number of misc. bugs so this makes debugging more difficult as you don't know whether it's a CF bug or problem in what you're doing.

Good luck,
GJ

 

[DaveXG]

Thanks for the response GunJack.

"/Data" is a root level directory and "Content" is the directory containing the collection, which is therefore, as far as I know, the collection name.

I am trying to avoid adding this collection through the cfadmin tool, because then I will have to create a second index for the same collection. This collection is already used by a completely different application and contains about 500MB of data - so you can see why I don't want a second index.

Any other thoughts?

Thanks again,

 

[GunJack]

Hi Dave,

I'm afraid I can't find much on this one. The only possible thing I found was a release note that said doing a reverse installation from 5.0 to 4.5 would cause verity collections not to work. If you were testing the 5.0 beta previously, this might be causing your problem. There have also been a lot of bugs in 4.5.1 so I would verify that you have the latest service pack as this often fixes unusual bugs.

The only other things I would suggest are to try removing the "criteria" attribute as it's optional and just see if it connects. If not, I would then try adding it in with the CF admin just to see if it will work that way.

Good luck,
GJ

 

[DaveXG]

thanks again GJ,

We has 4.5.1 with SP2 installed and definitely never had 5.0 beta.

I have already tried with no criteria without any success. I have also already tried mapping the existing collection with the admin tools, but just get the same error.

I am still trying to avoid creating a second index of the same data and a colleague gave me an alternative solution.

Aparantly we have a Verity deamon running, which will accept an http request with a qurey string as a cgi variable and return the relevant IDs. With these IDs, I can construct URLs, do more http requests - one for each ID returned and get back all the info I need.

Interesting theory, but so far I haven't got it working. I'll post again when (or if) I do, but please no one ask me about the Verity deamon, because I know nothing about it!

 

[DaveXG]

It works! and it's now running sucessfully on a live site. unfortunately I can't say how it works because it uses a perl program which I don't know anything about. All I am doing is parsing the results of the cfhttp requests.

So, my question was never answered, but at least I have a solution.

 

[CFHub]

Sorry if I skimmed over it, but I didn't see any mention of the "Map" action of the CFCOLLECTION tag.

The docs say that you should be able to simply "map" the "old" collection to a new "CF name".

Of course, I have never tried this

 

[GunJack]

Hey Dave,

Sorry I couldn't be of any help but I don't do much with Verity and even less with CF on unix. Glad you got it running.

GJ