Search display issue after upgrade

[Pacific Manuscripts Bureau]

Hello AtoM users, 

We are in the process of upgrading from version 2.3.0 to version 2.5.4. The existing database and digital objects have been migrated but the upgrade is not yet live. I have come up against a problem with the search and display in the upgrade. I can run exactly the same search in the existing system and the upgraded system and get vastly different search results. It seems that the same number of collection level records are displayed in each version but a lot of item level records are not displayed in the upgrade – sometimes the difference is thousands of items. One example is a collection of 500 photographs – all are displayed in the current system, whereas only the collection level record and one of the 500 photos are displayed in the upgraded the version. The photos are all there and can be viewed by opening the collection level record but I’m not sure why they’re not being picked up and displayed in the initial search.

If anyone has had similar experiences or suggestions I’d be happy to hear about them. It might be something obvious and I’m just not joining the dots.

Many thanks, much appreciated.

Kari

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Kari, 

Between version 2.3 and 2.5 we upgraded Elasticsearch from version 1.7 to version 5.6. There are a number of other dependency changes between versions - if you've tried to upgrade in place without following the updated installation instructions, then one possibility is that there's a mismatch in dependencies, or missing ones. The first thing I would check is that whoever performed the upgrade made sure to upgrade all the dependencies - in this case, especially Elasticsearch. 

If you have more than one version of ES installed and/or more than one AtoM instance on the same server, make sure each index has a unique name as well! By default in our installation instructions we just name the index atom, but you'll want to distinguish these if there's more than one. 

As an aside, I do believe that some search improvements were made along the way, reducing the amount of noise (i.e. unrelated or barely relevant results from search queries). For example, previously a keyword in a search query that appeared anywhere in a linked repository record would return every description linked to that repository, filling the results with noise (records that might not actually feature the search query term at all). The changes introduced between 2.3 and 2.5 can therefore sometimes have a dramatic effect on the number of results returned. Some of the relevant issue tickets: 

• https://projects.artefactual.com/issues/9773
  
• https://projects.artefactual.com/issues/8128
  
• https://projects.artefactual.com/issues/5944
  

However, if we're talking about just browsing for example, and you're missing records, then that's a whole separate issue. In that case, I would suggest you try some of AtoM's maintenance tasks first to see if it resolves the issue, such as: 

• Clearing the application cache: php symfony cc (docs here)
• Restarting PHP-FPM and (if in use) Memcached (docs here and here)
• Rebuilding the nested set: php symfony propel:build-nested-set (docs here)
• Repopulating the search index: php symfony search:populate (docs here)

Also, don't forget to clear your web browser cache or test in a private / incognito window, to ensure you're seeing the most recent version of the page and not an older cached copy. 

Let us know how it goes!

Cheers, 

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

he / him

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AtoM Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ica-atom-user...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ica-atom-users/202949f5-ec0a-4111-9863-4d9f85f812ecn%40googlegroups.com.

[Pacific Manuscripts Bureau]

Thanks, Dan. There's heaps to work with there! I will forward this on to the people doing the upgrade. It's good to know about the changes in search (and less noise is good, but some of what isn't being displayed now is definitely not noise). Thanks again - very helpful!