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Pal Platini
Bodyart
Join date: 15 Jun 2004
Posts: 108
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09-12-2006 22:39
Maybe we should start a new thread in technical forums, or someplace else.. edited my previous post, but not sure Kelly or Torley will see it. but anyhoo... I wasn't in world when I posted here the first time, but am now. Search > All under keyword tattoo turns up 472 found, there are no traffic numbers under the ALL tab. Also, note when I uncheck the show mature content box, my original/main shop shows up. I didn't count to see that all 472 were indeed listed in the window.. but the list is very long. Also, my traffic at my "Fresh Ink" by Bodyart location, is even less than the one not showing up in the Search where mature contents is checked.. but like I said.. there are no traffic numbers there to begin with.   |
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Kelly Linden
Linden Developer
Join date: 29 Mar 2004
Posts: 896
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09-12-2006 23:05
Cool. Here are some details about how search works.
I'm gonna come back to the 'all' category, because it is 'unique'.
When you do a search in Places for a term the viewer sends a request to the database. This request includes the term ('tattoo') and the type of the search ('Places'). On the database we do a lookup for parcels that are listed. We can't return all the results - sometimes there are just too many which creates too much load on the database and can flood a network connection. So we get the first 100. There should be a next button, so that the next 100 can get retrieved. Once retrieved by the client, the sort buttons on the page will only sort those 100.
Once-upon-a-time this was purely random. Actually, it may have been based on when the parcel was bought, or when the sim it was on came online or maybe it was really random. Anyway, it caused issues because there was no rhyme or reason to which page a parcel would be on, since the sorting was all done after the 100 were retrieved.
So it was changed. Now the first 100 with the highest traffic are retrieved. And there should be a button with 'next' so that the next 100 can be retrieved. The absence of this button is a bug.
But what about the Mature check box? Again, once-upon-a-time, the 'mature' filter happened after the 100 were received. This was bad because those who didn't want to see mature entries would only get like 60 entries or so, when we really could have given them 100. So this was changed so that the search on the database gets 100 non-mature entries if the box is unchecked.
I know this is long, but I think the detail is needed.
So what happens now is that the first 100 with the highest traffic are returned for a search term. If 'mature' is checked this will include some mature (lets say 40) and some non-mature (lets say 60). If your parcel has the 110th highest traffic for that term then it will not show up on the first page. However, if you uncheck mature (and your parcel is not mature), then suddenly your parcel has the 70th highest traffic for the search - well within the 100 to appear on the first page.
What about the All tab??? The all tab is weird. What it actually does is send the request like the Places tab. Except the server sees that and says "Oh! They want to search all?? Ok! I will just pretend they sent a search request on Places, People, Groups, Classifieds, all of them! Then send all the results back!". So even though 472 results were returned only 100 of them were places. You can count them if you want, there may be 101.
Is this optimal? Is this what people expect? Is this how it should
work? Probably not. We have plans to replace Search with something that is more robust and easier to use and that makes actual sense. However that project, like many other features, is on hold while we address scalability, security and performance issues. In the mean time I will see what I can do about getting that Next button back.
I hope this makes some sense.
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- Kelly Linden
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