Meta: Forum "search" button yields "0 questions ma...

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The Forum search button has never worked very well, now it doesn't do anything.

Perhaps now is the time to retire it in favor of a button that runs Google search with site:sqlanywhere-forum.sap.com/, or uses a Google Custom Search ( yes, that's a thing 🙂

( where "now" is defined as "some time in the far distant future" 🙂

For example, this Google search

validate dbvalid smirnios site:sqlanywhere-forum.sap.com/

yielded exactly what I wanted, first hit.

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Hm, I got 1604 results. But I have often experienced "0 results", too, I guess mostly when re-trying a search...

This is not SCN, so personally, I tend to use tags to search, too. Of course it is helpful when there are not two nearly identical tags like "validation" and "validate", so I replaced the latter with the former.

I'm aware that is no substitute for a working full-text search...

I just entered "select" and clicked "search" four times, got three "0 results" and then 1604 results on the fourth try.

If I keep clicking "search" eventually the website stops responding.

Maybe it's the same (architectural? design?) issue that makes multiple edits so [cough] exciting?

I am changing my vote... I vote "leave it alone", this site works well enough as is, even with the flaws it is Best Of Breed among SQL Anywhere discussion sites.

You actually use tags to search? Which means you depend on the "the crowd" to perform Library Science tasks like add tags? ...you do know "the crowd" contains idiots like me? 🙂

FWIW the publisher made me create the Index for my own book... it was one of the hardest tasks I've ever performed, AND the result was mediocre ( OK, the result was very bad 🙂

I guess I have retagged quite often, so I'm rather confident...

Well, I usually "search by tags" when the normal search does not reveal what I had expected. Which means I usually have a vague impression what has been discussed here - not everyone's position, I know:)

Breck, it's the best index in the best book about SQL Anywhere. It must be good.

FWIW, Laura Nevin had blogged about indexing a while ago, a great reading... Hope she is as successful with her new HANA project...

This is a topic worthy of discussion, "tags versus text", so here goes...

What happens when you do exactly the same "vague search" as a Google search with site:sqlanywhere-forum.sap.com?

Personally, I start with the usual 'how do I do [some thing]?' in Google, then narrow it, or widen it with vague terms as required.

IMO the tag words almost always appear in the text so a text search finds them... if tag words that DO NOT appear in the text are used, then they might have some value, but that's a lot to ask of the crowd 🙂

"how do I do xxxxxx?" - no-o-o, I almost never write this. Breck, if you want to improve your "google" skills, I suggest you the training - http://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com/

Thank you... these days "best index" isn't saying much because most books have very very very very very bad indexes, or no indexes.

I remember studying aerospace engineering in the 70s, and the German textbooks from the interwar years (20s and 30s) on aerodynamics were the best, most concise, best written I have ever read, with indexes that were wonderful... only Google is as good.

Speaking of which, when I look stuff up in my book ( which I do 🙂 I uses Adobe Acrobat find, not the index.

Laura's post is wishful thinking IMO... nobody, and I mean nobody, spends the money on good manual indexing. Saying that it's better to use an index than search is moot, because (good) indexes just ... do ... not ... exist ... not anywhere in SAP, as far as I know. Certainly not in DCX (well, it's so slow, it's hard to tell).

I believe the future lies in making content search-friendly.

When I read your question, I have decided to test this "bug" - I have found out that when you press the button (do the POST action), you don't get results, but when you copy+paste the same URL and do GET -> everything works well.

Now it seems better.

Thanks for the tip!

FWIW, try: how do i search google?

Then tell me why you would almost never do something like that 🙂

simply because I prefer to use the words with high selectivity. The same concept what you do with indexes in DB. The things "how do I" appear everywhere, but if I want to find what you wanted in this question, I'd rather write "sqlanywhere select" instead of "where can I find select for sql anywhere".

The sad thing is that the help articles are not SEO-crawler friendly. E.g. my search query gives me article for SA12, but I'd like to get something for SA17 ("select sqlaynwhere17" or "select sqlaynwhere 17" produce wrong results). I can only use "site:" to make the result better 😞

Yeah... got it... 🙂

Hm, will Google index the text of your memes?

Not as far as I know but Google Images does a good job on

[any topic under the sun] meme

(you do know, btw, these are not "my memes", I am not that creative 🙂

Man, I'd really hope the image upload here is re-established... - hope I'm not wrong.

That particular image won't work because it's a link to answers.sap.com and that server is detecting that the request is coming from a different site so it's disallowing the request.

I have tested this and googled a bit -> no, Google doesn't index the text. Folks say it is possible, but doesn't work 🙂

That is why every image should have "alt" for SEO-purposes.

Graeme, is there a chance to fix the failing upload issue? I only stored the image on the other SAP Q&A site because uploading here failed - as usually for some weeks...

@Graeme: I am so sorry for your loss! ( the loss of common sense, efficiency and opportunity you and all your colleagues experience working for The Dark SAP 🙂

Normally I would support your request BUT in this dark time of shrinking resources Graeme surely has more important SQL Anywhere things to do than fix cosmetic bugs in this forum... in this case you can find another site to host your image, all the while laughing!!!! at the absurdity of denying cross-site requests between sap.com and sap.com.

Hm, will Google index the text of your memes?

Google provides the answer when you do this modern search...

does google index the text inside images?

...or, you can use "advanced search techniques".

Like, you can use SQL Anywhere, or Oracle 🙂

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