MSDN DVD & local library, searching has changed'!
Egbert Nierop (MVP for IIS)
2005 release, it has become boolean 'or' based. In the past, it was boolean
'and'
so if I type
ASP.NET dllImport, I get over 500 results.
If I type DllImport I get +/- 350 results.
In the previous library, typing more words, would make the result list
smaller.
Is there a way to force a boolean 'and'?
Gerry Hickman
> Am I right to state that searching has worsened? Currently with the
> October 2005 release, it has become boolean 'or' based. In the past, it
> was boolean 'and'
>
> so if I type
>
> ASP.NET dllImport, I get over 500 results.
That sounds like a nightmare! Please someone say it's not true...
--
Gerry Hickman (London UK)
Michael Tissington
--
Michael Tissington
http://www.oaklodge.com
http://www.tabtag.com
"Gerry Hickman" <gerry...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:eUYXugRz...@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
Egbert Nierop (MVP for IIS)
"Michael Tissington" <mtiss...@newsgroups.nospam> wrote in message
news:uavIFVT...@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> Using "asp.net dllimport" I get 75 topics found
And you have the October 2005 release?
Anyway, with me it really has become 'or' and not 'and'.
Chuck Heatherly
Same here, I have October 2005, as a local install, and I get 500 results from
entering: asp.net dllimport. If I put it in quotes, I get zero results. Maybe
Michael is doing it online, or has an older version of the library.
Chuck
Egbert Nierop (MVP for IIS)
"Chuck Heatherly" <chuck.h...@community.nospam> wrote in message
news:0mnlk1lk95j9alkld...@4ax.com...
In fact, searching locally using more words, has become *useless*.
I do about 20 searches a day locally.
Gerry Hickman
Are we therefore saying the search has become WORSE with this latest
release??? If it's 'or' ing words entered, that is TOTALLY useless for
the kind of searches made by professional developers. Actually, it's
useless for anyone searching for anything!
Egbert Nierop (MVP for IIS) wrote:
>
Mike Kinsman [MS]
days.
The bottom line is that you've installed the VS2005 beta library on your
machines, and installing the VS2005 library replaces the VS03 search
algorithm on your computer with the VS05 version of it. This is why you're
seeing recently changed behavior in search results.
Essentially you're experiencing (one of the) the new search algorithms built
into the Whidbey Library. Here's a bit more information, quoted from a
program manager who works on the Search Algorithm:
"
The Whidbey search engine offers the user 3 basic search algorithms:
1. The OKAPI probabilistic model described below. This is the default search
algorithm.
2. The boolean search model where query terms are operands for boolean
search operators. The boolean search terms supported by the Whidbey search
engine are AND, OR, NOT, NEAR and THRU. Note: the terms have to be entered
in upper case to be considered boolean search terms. Your search might be
better handled if you entered the query ASP.NET AND dllImport, without
quotes.
3. String search where pre-defined, frequently occurring stop words are
stripped from a quoted search string, and the resulting string is searched
against the full-text search database. Stop words tend to be words like "a".
"the", "and", "an, etc. Removing them from the full text search index makes
the MSDN footprint smaller, but it also makes string searches a little less
accurate. So, if you are looking for the exact string "ASP.NET dllImport",
enter the string as your query with quotes.
The Whidbey Help search algorithm is based upon the work of Dr. Stephen
Robertson (Microsoft Research); specifically the OKAPI algorithm. This
algorithm has been subjected to heavy testing in the very large evaluation
program represented by the (D)ARPA/NIST Text Retrieval Conferences (TRECs).
The algorithm is based upon the probabilistic approach, and the literature
describing this approach is extensive and densely technical. (If you are
interested, you can visit : http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~ser/pubs.html ).
The probabilistic model seeks to base retrieval in answering, for each
document and each query, the basic question: "What is the probability that
this document is relevant to this query?". Each document in the corpus is
evaluated against the query to determine the probability that the document
is relevant to the query, and then the documents are returned in a
rank-ordered list, with the ranking based upon the probability of relevance.
To the user, this may appear to be an "OR" based search. Since the search
algorithm supports boolean search keyword operators, it would be possible to
compare the results of an OKAPI query =>Windows Security Features<= against
a boolean search =>Windows AND Security AND FEATURES<=. As the customer
noted, in their query, "ASP.NET dllImport" the term "ASP.NET" is going to be
used in many topics and contexts, so the probability that one topic is more
relevant than another will be low. The query that you are interested in
might be better handled by one of the other algorithms in the Whidbey search
engine.
"
*phew* Lots to digest. Let me know if you have any questions about this.
Note that if you want to roll back to the previous search methodology, you
will need to both uninstall the Whidbey Beta library *and* do a
reinstallation of your October 2005 library.
Thanks,
Mike Kinsman
Program Manager
MSDN Library
"Gerry Hickman" <gerry...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:upyteS3z...@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
Gerry Hickman
Thanks for this information, but there's only ONE search algorithm worth
using these days, and that's the one that made Google the most popular
search engine on the net. The algorithm is very simple, and finds the
right answer EVERY time, you can test it against Microsoft's on-line
version of MSDN if you want to, and others in this group have confirmed
it's better than the off-line MSDN search.
Words without quotes will be AND'd and words in quotes will be treated
as a phrase, and there are _no_ stop words, so if you're searching for
the windows "AT service" (schedule), you won't end up with the word AT
be treated as 'at' and thereby excluded from the search. This is all
search engine 101 stuff. You don't need to be a doctor to program it.
If you are saying it's possible to switch between the different
algorithms when using the off-line docs, then that's fine, just tell us
how? If not, then are you saying this is just a glitch because of a BETA
product and it will all be fixed with the final release? If so, that's
fine too, but surely you are not saying this is going to be the FORCED
algorithm in the final VS.NET 2005 and off-line MSDN docs??
Knud Hansen
version of Visual Studio .NET ?
First MS removes support to Visual studio 6.0 and now MS do the search
fuction in the dokumentation to
Visual studio 2003 and Visual Studio 6.0 useless ?
And the help in Visual studio 2005 has changed from a Information interface
to at stupid nonsens interface,
give os the interface and the search engine back in the dokumentation to
Visual studio 2005. Og give our
the option til select the old method Thank. And make it so, the old Search
engine in Visual 6.0 still works.
Knud Hansen (Denmark)
"Mike Kinsman [MS]" <mik...@nospam.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:e%23Q92f4z...@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
Mike Kinsman [MS]
If you want to switch back to the previous search algorithm for your
VS03-based Library:
- Please uninstall the VS05 Library Beta you have installed.
- You also need to perform a reinstallation of the October 2005 Library to
make sure the correct versions of the dlls get copied in to program
files\common files\microsoft shared\help.
I'm not a doctor either, but here why this is happening: Only one protocol
handler can be attached to each protocol (http://, ftp://, ms-help://) in
IE, which has the effect of one search algorithm working for ms-help://
content, which means only one search algorithm can be installed at a time
for MSDN Libraries.
This is all by design, so this will be the same story once VS05 RTMs.
Thanks,
Mike
"Gerry Hickman" <gerry...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
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