Walk Settings
is somewhat of a misnomer for a meta search profile
since it doesn't do any walking of it's own. On this page you list
the host(s) and profile(s) to search and merge when this profile is
accessed.
For each profile you want included in the search, list the full URL
to that machine's search
interface, e.g.
e.g. http://searchbox/texis/webinator/search/
. You
can use localhost
or 127.0.0.1
instead of the
hostname when using profiles on the same machine as the meta search.
The Display Name
column is used to provide a user friendly name
for this profile that will be displayed if the user is allowed to
choose which profiles to search.
The Status
column shows the status of the remote profile once a
host/profile has been entered and Update
has been pressed. If
the target is searchable, OK
is displayed. Otherwise, text
explaining the error is displayed. Refreshing the page re-queries the
target profiles.
If User Selection
is set to Y then the user will be presented
with a list of Display Names
and can choose which ones to
search. Leaving them all unchecked will cause them all to be searched.
The Meta Mode
setting controls whether profiles on the same
host will be searched serially or in parallel.
"Sameness" of host is determined by the
Target Search URL
setting, so using different names or a name and an IP address will
allow you to mix serial and parallel.
The Results Merge Method setting controls how target profiles' results are merged and sorted by the meta profile. Two methods are available:
Requested order
The results will be sorted as requested, i.e. as specified by
the order
query-string variable (or if that is unset,
the meta search Result Order
search setting). This is
the default. Thus, results from different target profiles may
or may not be mixed together (depending on how they sort by
order
).Target profile order
The results will be sorted by their Profiles
setting
order first, then by requested (order
variable) order.
This will result in all results of the first target profile
being shown first, then all results of the next target profile, etc.
Note that in both cases, the target profiles still individually
sort their results according to requested order
. The
Results Merge Method setting only affects how those top results are
then merged and sorted by the meta profile.
All servers with profiles listed as targets of a meta search must have
the IP address of that meta search server listed in the
Cluster Members
setting under
Maintenance->System Wide Settings
. Otherwise meta searches will
return the error "Profile not Visible".