Xapian discuss - Jul 2007 - omega number range searches - query

I have installed and tested xapian/omega 1.02. I am using the omega.cgi for
searches and have indexed 1000+ plain text files using omindex. Fantastic!
Thanks, I am able to quickly and sensibly order these documents by text
criteria.

These text files contain various numbers of dates in the form of YYYY, mostly in
free-text rather than formatted fields. I was hoping to be able to use the cgi
to limit searches of these documents by date/number ranges e.g. "catalogue
1890..1910", but I not getting what I expected.

Using godmode to inspect the indexing, only the 'file date modified' is
stored
as Y2007, fair enough, the text is not in the YYYYMMDD format, but none of the
other numbers are stored as values either. In fact the document values all
appear to contain garbage e.g.

Document Values
Value#	Value
0	F?? 
1	X?s?1??z
,:;??*

The various years are picked out as plain terms, but I do not seem to be able to
do number range searches. I have scoured the documentation and mailing lists and
have now confused myself.

Can you help me with 2 questions:
1) Should the omega cgi interface support number range searches with/without
additional configuration?
2) From my outline does it appear that omindex has indexed my documents as
expected - with particular reference to the document values?

Eike wrote:
> These text files contain various numbers of dates in the form of YYYY,
mostly in
> free-text rather than formatted fields. I was hoping to be able to use the
cgi
> to limit searches of these documents by date/number ranges e.g.
"catalogue
> 1890..1910", but I not getting what I expected.
> 
> Using godmode to inspect the indexing, only the 'file date
modified' is stored
> as Y2007, fair enough, the text is not in the YYYYMMDD format, but none of
the
> other numbers are stored as values either. In fact the document values all
> appear to contain garbage e.g.
> 
> Document Values
> Value#	Value
> 0	F?? 
> 1	X?s?1??z
,:;??*
> 
> The various years are picked out as plain terms, but I do not seem to be
able to
> do number range searches. I have scoured the documentation and mailing
lists and
> have now confused myself.
> 
> Can you help me with 2 questions:
> 1) Should the omega cgi interface support number range searches
with/without
> additional configuration?
If you use omindex, only the last modified date is stored.  It _should_ 
be possible to do a date range search using this value, by setting the 
START and END cgi parameters.  I don't believe sorting or range 
restriction is possible currently with any other numeric value.
> 2) From my outline does it appear that omindex has indexed my documents as
> expected - with particular reference to the document values?
Yes - those two values look vaguely plausible: value 0 is the last_mod 
timestamp, as a 4 byte integer (ie, binary data, not ascii; hence the 
odd characters).  value 1 is an MD5 sum of the document, again as binary 
data, not ascii.