Ferret talk - May 2006 - Offline indexing with Drb, online using index in Rails?

I have a Rails application where I need to search. Every time an update 
happens to something I need to update the index for the changed and 
related document. As I currently have to run on Windows (and therefore 
can''t use the native extension) it is quite slow to index sometimes and
the user have to wait a couple of seconds for the save operation to 
return.

A thought is to put this outside the Rails application in an external 
service that is called through Drb. Is it possible to index with one 
application and use the index with another at the same time?

Regards,

Marcus

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On Wed, May 24, 2006 at 09:57:13AM +0200, Marcus Andersson
wrote:
> I have a Rails application where I need to search. Every time an update 
> happens to something I need to update the index for the changed and 
> related document. As I currently have to run on Windows (and therefore 
> can''t use the native extension) it is quite slow to index
sometimes and
> the user have to wait a couple of seconds for the save operation to 
> return.
> 
> A thought is to put this outside the Rails application in an external 
> service that is called through Drb. Is it possible to index with one 
> application and use the index with another at the same time?
as long as only one process is writing to the index that''s fine. But
you
have to reopen searchers to see the changes done to the index.

Jens


-- 
webit! Gesellschaft f?r neue Medien mbH          www.webit.de
Dipl.-Wirtschaftsingenieur Jens Kr?mer       kraemer at webit.de
Schnorrstra?e 76                         Tel +49 351 46766  0
D-01069 Dresden                          Fax +49 351 46766 66

Jens Kraemer wrote:
> On Wed, May 24, 2006 at 09:57:13AM +0200, Marcus Andersson wrote:
> as long as only one process is writing to the index that''s fine.
But you
> have to reopen searchers to see the changes done to the index.
> 
How does that work in a normal Rails application if you run in a 
production environment (ie cluster of Mongrels, FCGI or SCGI where you 
always have a number of processes running)? I mean, every instance of 
the Rails env might want to add something to or read from the index.

/Marcus

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Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On Wed, May 24, 2006 at 02:35:20PM +0200, Marcus Andersson
wrote:
> Jens Kraemer wrote:
> > On Wed, May 24, 2006 at 09:57:13AM +0200, Marcus Andersson wrote:
> > as long as only one process is writing to the index that''s
fine. But you
> > have to reopen searchers to see the changes done to the index.
> > 
> How does that work in a normal Rails application if you run in a 
> production environment (ie cluster of Mongrels, FCGI or SCGI where you 
> always have a number of processes running)? I mean, every instance of 
> the Rails env might want to add something to or read from the index.
there''s a file based locking mechanism, Ferret''s index class
handles
possible collisions by waiting and retrying the write after a short time.
It also handles re-opening the searcher for you.

If you don''t use the Index class it''s up to you to detect
changes to the
index and re-open your searcher. there''s a method named latest?
somewhere, you could look into the Index class to see how it''s done
there.

Jens


-- 
webit! Gesellschaft f?r neue Medien mbH          www.webit.de
Dipl.-Wirtschaftsingenieur Jens Kr?mer       kraemer at webit.de
Schnorrstra?e 76                         Tel +49 351 46766  0
D-01069 Dresden                          Fax +49 351 46766 66