I am working on extending the DNN search engine to integrate with our Google Search Appliance, and I am wondering the reasoning for the DNN engine being implemented at the module level instead of page (tab) level? I am not criticising or 2nd-guessing, I am looking for some insight into the devs' thought process, so I can determine what my best way to move forward is.

Thanks,

Vin

A whole range of reasons.

1. The page knows nothing of the modules. Modules display various bits of information sometimes based on querystring parameters. Page level indexing would need to traverse all links on the page and 'hope' to get all the content out. This would not be a very efficient process IMO.

2. The page knows nothing of the module security settings. So you'd be indexing as what? As admin I guess. So you'd see all content. But then how does the search results page know what is available to the currently authenticated in user?

3. More efficiency. Not all content is interesting to search. This is up to the application designer's discretion of course, but indexing everything that is spewed out could make the search engine top heavy. Already the search tables account for most of the DB size on my site.

I'm pushing this even further. I want search to go content level. That is: every bit of content has security attached to it. But this is a bridge too far at this point in time.

Peter

Chris, Peter, Cathal,

Thanks very much for the information. Makes much more sense to me now. The help is much appreciated!

Vin