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Subject:RE: Is a bad index better than no index? From:"Michele Marques" <marquesm -at- autros -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 23 May 2001 11:28:21 -0400
Geoff Hart writes:
> David Castro wonders: <<... is it better to create an index that
> isn't great
> (due to my lack of an indexer's skill), or to leave the document without
> one?>>
>
> Any help is better than none [...]
> As you note, full-text search is no substitute for a good index. Not even
> close, and it never will be until it includes synonym searches, stemming,
> and so on by default. Because it's easy to produce documentation that uses
> perfectly logical language that simply isn't the language the
> user thinks of
> first when they search, you need the ability to seek synonyms. That's an
> index. Ditto for any search involving related concepts.
I would further add that even if the user does know the term, a full-text
search can turn up too many results. For example, there may be a field that
appears throughout the system once it is set up (e.g. company name), but the
user searching for "company name" in an index, is unlikely to want to check
each report (which all display the company name).
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