New (and major) automatic indexing feature suggestion

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I know there's a scheduler on the zoom desktop/client program to run periodical (re)indexing. But there's the limitation that it needs a PC to be on, query the website (normally through a ADSL connection, using bandwidth, etc) and uploading (automatically but using bandwidth and taking time again).

The suggestion:

Create a CGI script (ie. compile the main indexer engine) that would re-index the site on the server, using a CRON job and based on a configuration setting (.czfg file or similar). This would be much faster, would require no FTP, etc... This would be particularlly useful for large site.

Does it make sense? Would it be possible?

francisco

[Anonymous]

When I say CGI script, please ignore the "script" part...

[David]

It is already possible to schedule jobs directly on the server and avoid FTP. But only if you have a Windows server. If you don't have Linux server then you need to upload the files to the server.

We are aware we could convert the indexer code code to run on Unix / Linux but

1. It would be a lot of work for us.
2. The indexer can use a lot of RAM & CPU time, for big sites you probably don't want it on the server anyway, you would probably want it on a seperate machine.
3. We would still need to provide some sort of user interface. Just moving the engine is not enough. You need to be able to start it, stop it, monitor the progress, look at errors, etc..
4. It is a pain in the butt to develop Linux software that is distributed in a binary form, becuase there are two many slightly incompatible versions of Linux on the market.
5. There are a lot of hosting companies that use Apache to limit CGI execution time on their servers. They kill any process that uses too much RAM or CPU time. See, http://www.wrensoft.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12

However I agree there are still some users who would find a Linux indexer useful and we might well implment such a thing in the future.

------
David

[Anonymous]

I agree with the first post that it would be VERY nice to have an indexer for Linux, even if you limited it to one or two distributions.

Thanks,
Sean

[David]

I don't think it would make sense to only support 1 or 2 Linux versions from a commercial point of view. The Linux market is highly fragmented. 100's of different distros and 1000's of different combinations of libraries. Not to mention 64bit releases, Linux on Sun & Mac hardware and clusters.

People would not select a particular O/S just to run our software. If this was the case, most commercial companies would just use a Windows machine. Also all the people running on 3rd party hosting have no control over the distros use on their host. People want to use their favorite distro.

If we only did SUSE 9, for example, then maybe we would cover only 10% of the Linux market. Which is not worth it.

We also now have some experience selling commerial Linux products in another area of our business. We have discovered that people using Windows are much more likely to purchase software. The sales ratio is about 30 : 1. We sell 30 copies of the Windows software vs 1 copy of the same Linux software.

So from a money making point of view (we aren't a charrity after all), Linux is pretty poor. We would need to switch to a different sales model. e.g. give the software away and charge for support. But would you be wanting to paid me to write this reply. Unlikely

------
David