Thunderstone Blog: Customized Search Engine & Search Software

Thunderstone Releases Version 27

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0400

New search features include

Additional Login Form Flows: Multi step login forms are now supported by our Primer URL settings where there may be several steps required to login to the site, and the forms on intermediate pages may have dynamic or session specific information.
Improved Test Fetch Information: Test Fetch now provides additional information about the Primer URLs used, and response received to assist with setting up complicated login flows.
Metasearch Sorting: Meta search profiles now support sorting on two fields, which is commonly used by Parametric searches.
Other fixes: Miscellaneous other bug fixes and enhancements to the crawl and search interfaces.

Availability

Search Appliance Version 27 is available to all Search Appliance and Parametric Search Appliance customers who have a current maintenance plan by following the menu System / System Setup / Update Software.

Webinator Version 27 is available to all Webinator customers who have a current maintenance plan by contacting Thunderstone.

For 40 years Thunderstone Software has been dedicated to providing the best search solutions possible to government, corporate, and non-profit customers, with exceptional service and devotion to finding the right solution for the customer.

For further information call +1 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com.

Thunderstone Releases Version 25

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 00:00:00 -0500

New search features include

Keep/Ignore Selectors: Keep/Ignore Selectors are specified with a restricted CSS Selector syntax. The default is nav, header, footer. Previous Keep HTML settings are migrated to Ignore Selectors. This provides more flexibility in some cases than the Keep/Ignore HTML Strings (previously called Keep/Ignore Tags) setting.
RDFa/Mircodata Support: RDFa (meta property) and Microdata (meta itemprop) values are now available after fetching a document for use in Data From Field.
Best Bets API: Best Bets are now supported in the Dataload API, and are replicated along with other setttings.
Other fixes: Miscellaneous other bug fixes and enhancements to the crawl and search interfaces.

Availability

Search Appliance Version 25 is available to all Search Appliance and Parametric Search Appliance customers who have a current maintenance plan by following the menu System / System Setup / Update Software.

Webinator Version 25 is available to all Webinator customers who have a current maintenance plan by contacting Thunderstone.

For further information call +1 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com.

Thunderstone Releases Version 20

Tue, 16 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -0500

New features include

Rank Bias: Parametric profiles gain new capabilities to set a bias on a per document field using data from field rules. This allow documents to be biased up or down in the search results, for example PDF results could be biased down, or documents with "Important" in a meta tag could be ranked higher.

Improvements

Content Repositories: Azure Blob Storage support was added for crawling content stored in Azure Blobs.
File Share Robustness: Network shares are remounted if needed at the start of a crawl.
Audit Logging: The ability to log all setting modifications was added to aid with auditing setting changes.
Other fixes: Miscellaneous other bug fixes and enhancements to the crawl and search interfaces. See the announcement on the message board for full details.

Availability

Search Appliance Version 20 is available to all Search Appliance and Parametric Search Appliance customers who have a current maintenance plan by following the menu System / System Setup / Update Software.

Webinator Version 20 is available to all Webinator customers who have a current maintenance plan by contacting Thunderstone.

For 36 years Thunderstone Software has been dedicated to providing the best search solutions possible to government, corporate, and non-profit customers, with exceptional service and devotion to finding the right solution for the customer.

For further information call +1 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com.

Thunderstone Releases Version 19

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0400

New features include

Entity Recognition: Parametric profiles gain new capabilities to extract information from document text. Now even documents with no metadata can contribute terms to faceted navigation, via entity recognition. For example, a list of terms, e.g. cities or manufacturers, can be defined for extraction and then searched or grouped by. Or a regular expression can be crafted to match a specific pattern of data — e.g. a defined syntax for part or social security numbers. And the XML syntax for such entities is largely compatible with GSA syntax, making upgrading a snap.

Improvements

Dashboard Statisitics: Several new statistics have been added to help monitor activity, including the search rate, fetch rate, and document growth rate so you can identify problems that may arise in the future.
Unmount Shares: Network shares can now be unmounted without removing the settings.
XSS Protection fix: Browsers may have warned on the settings page about possible XSS problems. There was no vulnerability in the appliance, and the settings were updated correctly, however now the XSS warnings no longer are triggered.
Other fixes: Miscellaneous other bug fixes and enhancements to the crawl and search interfaces including result counts and some REX expression handling. See the announcement on the message board for full details.

Availability

Search Appliance Version 19 is available to all Search Appliance and Parametric Search Appliance customers who have a current maintenance plan by following the menu System / System Setup / Update Software.

Webinator Version 19 is available to all Webinator customers who have a current maintenance plan by contacting Thunderstone.

For further information call +1 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com.

Thunderstone Releases Version 18

Thu, 23 Feb 2017 00:00:00 -0500

New features include

Meta search profile biasing: In a meta (federated) search each profile can be given a weight for additional control over the output to favor certain backend profiles.
Canonical URL support: The crawler will now respect link rel="canonical" headers to index the canonical form of the URL.

Improvements

HTTPS/SSL Cipher support: More flexibility in specifying supported ciphers to let you balance security and older browser support.
Reject Rules always honored: Reject rules will now always be honored, so pages will be removed from the index on a refresh if they rules now exclude them, and robots.txt rules that block the base URL will still be kept.
Faceted search counts: Faceted search counts improved when estimated due to large number of results.
Other fixes: Miscellaneous other bug fixes and enhancements to the crawl and search interfaces.

Availability

Search Appliance Version 18 is available to all Search Appliance and Parametric Search Appliance customers who have a current maintenance plan by following the menu System / System Setup / Update Software.

Webinator Version 18 is available to all Webinator customers who have a current maintenance plan by contacting Thunderstone.

For 35 years Thunderstone Software has been dedicated to providing the best search solutions possible to government, corporate, and non-profit customers, with exceptional service and devotion to finding the right solution for the customer.

For further information call +1 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com.

A Solution to Google Site Search Being Discontinued

Wed, 22 Feb 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Google recently announced that it is no longer going to be selling Google Site Search. This development leaves many users looking for an alternative. Fortunately, Thunderstone Search can help maintain search functionality.

Replacing Google Site Search with Thunderstone

Thunderstone has had a singular focus on helping organizations use search technology to improve their productivity and solve their unique business problems for over 36 years. To help you transition quickly we are offering a risk-free, cost-free transition to our hosted solution that you can then test and maintain for a modest monthly or annual fee.

When you choose Thunderstone, you get more than just a search solution. We offer ongoing support to provide your organization the value you need. Our proven support and product capabilities have already earned us the appreciation of our current clients:

"Our decision to buy and deploy three Thunderstone Search Appliances saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars in development costs." — Kevin J. Payne, Director of System Applications, U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)

"[A] huge Thunderstone fan... we had a 'search' for a while for a replacement for the unbelievably [high] priced Google Search Appliance, and found you guys, and haven't looked back since." — David Pagini, Voya Investment Management

At Thunderstone our focus is on providing a search solution tailored to your needs. If you have felt limited by the capabilities and flexibility of GSS (Google Site Search), worried about your information being hosted in the cloud then reach out and discover an alternative.

Upgrade to a Thunderstone Hosted Search

If you're looking for a new search solution or need to find a replacement for your Google Site Search, contact us online or give us a call at 216-820-2200 for more information about upgrading to Thunderstone.

A Solution to DigitalGov Search Being Discontinued

Fri, 09 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0500

DigitalGov recently announced that it is no longer going to be serving state or local government agencies. This development leaves many agencies scrambling for an alternative. Fortunately, Thunderstone Search can help maintain search functionality.

Replacing DigitalGov Search with Thunderstone

"Our decision to buy and deploy three Thunderstone Search Appliances saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars in development costs." — Kevin J. Payne, Director of System Applications, U.S. General Services Administration (GSA)

"[A] huge Thunderstone fan... we had a 'search' for a while for a replacement for the unbelievably [high] priced Google Search Appliance, and found you guys, and haven't looked back since." — David Pagini, Voya Investment Management

Upgrade to a Thunderstone Hosted Search

If you're looking for a new search solution or need to find a replacement for your DigitalGov Search, contact us online or give us a call at 216-820-2200 for more information about upgrading to Thunderstone.

Thunderstone Releases Version 17

Thu, 14 Jul 2016 00:00:00 -0400

New search features include

Drop in search interface: It is now easier to add a search interface to a website by embedding some simple HTML code into a web page. Using Javascript and AJAX the search interface and result pages are created without needing to create several custom pages and actions on your website.
link: syntax: Search users can now use the link: syntax to find pages that link to a specific page.
Unprimer URLs: If the crawler needs to logout from a website or take another actions at the end of the crawl an unprimer URL can be specified that behaves similar to the primer URL for logging in at the start of a crawl.
Other fixes: Miscellaneous other bug fixes and enhancements to the crawl and search interfaces.

Availability

Search Appliance Version 17 is available to all Search Appliance and Parametric Search Appliance customers who have a current maintenance plan by following the menu System / System Setup / Update Software.

Webinator Version 17 is available to all Webinator customers who have a current maintenance plan by contacting Thunderstone.

For further information call +1 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com.

Thunderstone Releases Version 16

Mon, 01 Feb 2016 00:00:00 -0500

CLEVELAND, OH, February 1, 2016 — Improving the quality of search for intranet, public facing websites and aggregator sites -- Thunderstone Search Appliance and Webinator Version 16 is here.

New crawl features include

Additional authorization options

If you have websites that require user authentication, the latest version of the Search Appliance and Webinator include support for:

Central Authentication Service (CAS): These form-based logins may now be crawled simply with a user name and password, without needing to create custom authentication rules.
Negotiate Kerberos option authentication is now supported for crawls.

Simplified crawl configuration

In addition to CAS, version 16 also adds support for:

Sitemaps allowing easier crawling of sites where URLs are not easily determined from a crawl.
XML/XSL site support by applying stylesheets to sites that deliver content via XML and XSL instead of HTML; the searchable text is better identified.
Proxy Auto-config (PAC) file support which makes it easier to index and crawl enterprises composed of different networks with varying proxy rules: the same config files used by browsers may now be used at crawl time.
The Ajax crawlable URL scheme from Google is supported, allowing Ajax based dynamic sites that support it to be crawled and indexed more effectively.

Additional fixes and enhancements

In addition improvements have been made to the administrative interface as well as some file-format processing.

Availability

Search Appliance Version 16 is available to all Search Appliance and Parametric Search Appliance customers who have a current maintenance plan by following the menu System / System Setup / Update Software.

Webinator Version 16 is available to all Webinator customers who have a current maintenance plan by contacting Thunderstone.

For 34 years Thunderstone Software has been dedicated to providing the best search solutions possible to government, corporate, and non-profit customers, with exceptional service and devotion to finding the right solution for the customer.

For further information call +1 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com.

The Benefits of Thunderstone's Investment Protection Program

Tue, 15 Dec 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Nobody wants a bad investment. You paid good money for a service, and you don't want to be trapped by a bad decision. Thunderstone helps you unlock the information within your organization while helping you protect the investment you made in a search solution.

The Benefits of Thunderstone's Investment Protection Program

When you work with Thunderstone, you get treated fairly. There's no sudden realization that you need to upgrade to a new version to get what you really wanted. You won't feel forced to comply with unreasonable demands because you don't control a key component of your business.

No, you'll get full ownership of your Thunderstone search solution, meaning you're in charge and won't have to be afraid of being overcharged in the future.

Search Solutions That Grow With Your Organization

With Thunderstone, your company won't be penalized for success. If you are a current client, you won't be charged full price when you need to move up to an upgraded search solution. Instead, you'll only pay the difference between your current search capacity and the level of your new search solution.

Searching for the Right Solution

An investment in Thunderstone is one that allows your search solution to grow with you. Contact us online or give us a call at 216-820-2200 today to talk to one of our experts about a search solution for your organization.

Upgrade from Google Mini with Thunderstone

Tue, 08 Dec 2015 00:00:00 -0500

You don't need to be a big business to get quality service. While the Google Mini was discontinued by Google, Thunderstone still takes care of small- and medium-sized businesses in need of a search appliance by upgrading your old option.

Out With the Old Search Appliance and In With the New

You shouldn't be left out in the cold because your old search appliance was discontinued. Our products are designed with the flexibility to meet your needs. The Thunderstone Search Appliance benefits your organization through:

Increased website ROI
Reduced customer service costs
Increased productivity
Customized configuration and integration

Customers that upgrade to the Thunderstone Search Appliance will receive assistance from our experts during the transition so that you can see the difference for yourself. We also set you up with a 30-day money back guarantee in case the search appliance isn't for you.

Search Appliance Solutions from Thunderstone

We've worked with customers of all shapes and sizes, ranging from government entities to businesses. Google may not cater to smaller organizations, but our premier search appliances can help your business get the results it needs. Contact us online or give us a call at 216-820-2200 for more information about upgrading to Thunderstone.

Thunderstone Releases Search Appliance Version 15

Mon, 02 Nov 2015 00:00:00 -0500

CLEVELAND, OH, November 2, 2015 — Improving the quality of search for intranet, public facing websites and aggregator sites -- Search Appliance Version 15 is here.

New crawl features include

Performance improvements indexing many sites at once: If you are creating a search that indexes many different websites the performance of the indexing has been improved. This will allow for more frequent indexing of such indexes.
MIME type enforcement: When crawling across many sites you may find that the web server may still return content that does not match the Mime Types requested. The setting will now be enforced by the crawler, which can help eliminate a lot of unwanted content from a crawl.
Client Certificate option: The crawler can be given a client SSL certificate to use when crawling HTTPS sites, allowing crawling of sites that use client SSL certificates for authentication.

New search features include

Quotes for Literal option: Allows you to change the meaning of quoting a search term from creating a phrase that is still subject to the normal thesaurus, word form and other linguistic processing to searching for exactly what you typed in, although still case-insensitive.
Improved HTML Highlighting: Lets users see the results in the original HTML for better contextual information with support for more complex HTML.

Availability

Search Appliance Version 15 is available to all Search Appliance and Parametric Search Appliance customers who have a current maintenance plan by following the menu System / System Setup / Update Software.

For further information call +1 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com.

The Benefits of a Custom Search Engine Tool

Wed, 07 Oct 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Not all websites search needs are the same. A custom solution may be needed to handle your searching needs. Thunderstone's TEXIS can provide you with a full text search engine that will give you the power you need to handle your internal searches.

What Exactly is TEXIS?

TEXIS is a fully-integrated full text search engine. That makes TEXIS a flexible option that works with numerous integrated applications, including:

message profiling and handling
image library management
help-desk support
online news retrieval
business intelligence
research libraries
litigation support
Internet retail operations

TEXIS is powerful search engine option that can handle 10,000 records and more with an English language vocabulary of 250,000 words, plus phrase concept associations for natural language queries. In fact, TEXIS is the core technology for our other products, as it encompasses database and search engine capabilities.

What Makes it Different from Other Search Engines?

The key for TEXIS is versatility and customization. TEXIS isn't limited to website or fileserver searches; it can be tailored to do even more, giving you an option that be customized to be as powerful as you need it to be. TEXIS is the only search engine with a Structured Query Language configuration. This provides you with added benefits and advantages when it comes to complicated search requirements.

Fully-Integrated Full Text Search Engines from Thunderstone

Some of our customers use TEXIS as a search engine, others need it as an e-commerce system. Our TEXIS technology can be customized to fit your needs, so don't be afraid to tell us what you need and we'll be happy to work with you.Contact us online or give us a call at 216-820-2200 for more information on how TEXIS from Thunderstone can benefit you.

Thunderstone Releases Webinator™ Web Index & Retrieval System Version 13

Tue, 07 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0400

CLEVELAND, OH — Making it even easier to integrate high quality search into your website -- Webinator Version 13 is here.

New features include:

Query Autocomplete, guides your users to the search they want
HTML Highlighting, lets users see the results in the original HTML for better contextual information
Expanded XML/SOAP API allows integration of administrative interface
And much more: see the Webinator home page for full details

For further information call +1 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com.

Thunderstone Offers Product Catalog Search

Mon, 21 Apr 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Increase sales and reduce customer service calls when your customers quickly and easily find the products they need.

CLEVELAND, OH — Thunderstone Software LLC announces the Thunderstone Catalog Search solution designed so all kinds of business, from manufacturers, industrial supply and other B2B suppliers to online web stores can boost sales with enhanced search capabilities.

Query auto-complete providing suggestions as you type, often showing the desired product with a few keystrokes
Full catalog import allows searching and faceting on any attribute
Automatically select facets based on search results
Highly configurable search results order, using one or more of: relevance, popularity, rating, price, profit, "featured", any other product attribute, e.g. size or capacity
Preconfigured searches on SEO friendly pages
Analytics integration
Configurable search result styles including grid and list, which can include pictures and "Add to Cart" links.

The Thunderstone Catalog Solution can be delivered in a variety of ways to suit the customer, include a hosted SaaS solution, virtual appliance, hardware appliance or software. Each comes with Thunderstone’s Head Start Assistance which ensures a successful deployment, and Investment Protection Program so as your needs grow the solution can be scaled up without starting over with a new solution.

To find out more about the Thunderstone Catalog Solution call +1 216 820 2200, Monday - Friday, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Eastern Time, or visit www.thunderstone.com/catalog. After an initial needs analysis you can try the solution for 30-days with your own catalog to see how it can enhance your web based catalog.

For over 30 years Thunderstone Software has been dedicated to providing the best search solutions possible to government, corporate, and non-profit customers, with exceptional service and devotion to finding the right solution for the customer.

For further information call +1 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com/catalog or email

Thunderstone Offers Version 9 of the Thunderstone Search Appliance

Wed, 06 Nov 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Superior Technical Support Continues to Drive Further Product Enhancements

CLEVELAND, OH — Thunderstone Software LLC has released Version 9 of the Thunderstone Search Appliance, adding a number of new features which apply to Thunderstone's entire line of Appliance products, including Thunderstone Parametric Search Appliances. These enhancements include:

Faster Searching — searches return two to three times faster in many cases
Query auto-complete providing suggestions as you type
Content caching to allow users to view off-line content
Improved administrative interface with selectable themes
Walk log archiving for extended period analysis

Whether configured as a Thunderstone Search Appliance SBE (Small Business Edition,) a Thunderstone Search Appliance (Enterprise Edition) or a Thunderstone Parametric Search Appliance, the Appliance comes with:

A one-time, perpetual license that saves customers 40-60 percent (or more) compared to Thunderstone's closest competitor
Two years of included maintenance, easily extended for additional years at affordable annual rates
Superior technical support from software engineers readily accessible to customers by phone, email and message board
No restrictions on indexing third-party websites for user-empowering applications and for competitive intelligence purposes
Ability to fully search targeted repositories (file servers, web servers, intranet/portal servers, database servers, application databases, etc.) and to handle files that exceed 30 MB in size
An attractive Product Investment Protection Program that makes upgrading a breeze, applying 100 percent of the initial Thunderstone product's purchase price to any desired upgrade
Availability as a virtual appliance image to run under a hypervisor to allow for more efficient hardware utilization and manageability

All Thunderstone customers with current Appliance maintenance agreements in place automatically qualify to receive the downloadable Version 9 software update.

Reporters, editors, analysts, I.T. integrators/resellers and prospective customers who would like to see the Thunderstone Search Appliance “in action” may phone Thunderstone at +1 216-820-2200, Monday - Friday, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Eastern Time, to arrange a free and personalized product demo. After the scheduled demo, you may also request shipment of a pre-configured Thunderstone Search Appliance that you can thoroughly evaluate in your own unique environment for up to 30 days.

For further information call +1 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com or email

Texis Overview

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Executive Summary:

TEXIS is the only fully integrated SQL RDBMS optimized for full-text search.
TEXIS has high-performance ability to intelligently query and manage databases containing natural language text, numeric values, standard data types, geographic information, images, video, audio and other payload data.
TEXIS powers real-time applications with zero-latency data insertion, providing immediate search availability of key data without waiting for scheduled index updates.
TEXIS efficiently sorts and groups search results by any field(s) in the data. It can quickly sort tens of thousands of hits or more.
TEXIS, the innovative development platform behind Thunderstone's entire line of enterprise search products, lets users and developers incorporate their own unique knowledge and expertise into customized search solutions that easily integrate with other applications.

What makes Texis different from other search engines and databases?

Thunderstone's Texis is the only search engine developed from the ground up as a fully integrated SQL RDBMS optimized for full-text search, and it's the only relational database that can store and search text documents of unlimited size within standard database tables.

Used by hundreds of thousands of database application developers around the world, Structured Query Language provides many advantages for satisfying complicated search requirements. SQL also holds great promise as a reliable, well-defined path for implementing unanticipated new search functionality in the future. All other search engines offer a much narrower range of possibilities based on proprietary interfaces.

While typical search engines do a nice job of searching unstructured text and traditional databases have an impressive ability to handle queries on fielded or structured data, text searching and relational database management each rely upon radically different paradigms for organizing and retrieving information. They both developed and matured over decades as completely separate technologies, and they don't “marry” easily.

Thunderstone is the only company that has accomplished the true marriage of a full-text search engine and a powerful SQL relational database in a single platform. Addressing this challenge, the simultaneous searching of structured and unstructured data, remains one of Thunderstone's core competencies.

Deep in the heart of the Texis RDBMS resides Thunderstone's Metamorph, a concept-based natural language search engine utilizing advanced lexical set logic.

Metamorph has often been classified as a form of Artificial Intelligence, since its functions fall into the categories of knowledge acquisition, natural language processing and intelligent text retrieval. The software attempts in its own way to understand your search queries, to represent its understanding to the data in the files and to come up with relevant responses as retrieved portions of full-text information which best correspond to your submitted queries.

Metamorph's starting vocabulary has 250,000+ word connections, constructed in a dense web of associations and equivalences. Search parameters can be adjusted to dynamically dictate surface and deep inference. The program's responses can be controlled so that they are direct or abstract in relation to user queries. Proximity of concept can be fine tuned so as to qualify degree of relevance, providing matches which are sometimes concrete, sometimes abstract, as desired.

Metamorph allows for editing word sets. This means that you may select which associations you would like in connection to any search. You can create your own concept sets permanently for future use. You can fine tune the search to use associations of only a certain part of speech. You can enter all known spelling variations of any particular search word in the same way. You can generally customize the program to include your own nomenclature and vocabulary, making it increasingly intelligent the longer it is in use. When you want to control exactly what associations are made with any or all of the words or expressions in your searches, you can do so by editing the equivalence set associated with any word already known by the Equivalence File or by creating associations for a new or created word not yet known.

You can call up the ApproXimate Pattern Matcher (XPM) and tell it to look for a certain percentage of proximity to an entered string, finding misspelled names and typos. You can also look for numeric quantities entered as text, thanks to the Numeric Pattern Matcher (NPM) which recognizes that “four score and seven” is the same amount as “87.”

Metamorph allows users to search for intersections of sets of lexical items, while also performing prefix and suffix morpheme processing. Users can specify, right in their queries, the delimiters of choice: i.e., they can look for lexical intersections within a sentence, a paragraph, a page, a designated amount of text or some other defined textual unit such as a memo.

Texis, with Metamorph inside it, provides a modular set of tools to attack the formidable problem of how to get at and deal with a large volume of information when you don't really know precisely what you need or where to find it. Thunderstone's Texis gives you the power, speed and flexibility to rapidly implement a customized search solution that will accomplish your data access/retrieval objectives in the most dynamic, efficient and pragmatic way possible.

Thunderstone's Texis has a number of characteristics and built-in advantages that differentiate it from other search solutions:

A fully integrated SQL database management system (DBMS) that follows the relational database model, Texis is optimized for addressing the inclusion of unlimited quantities of narrative full text. It provides a method for managing and manipulating an organization's shared data, where intelligent text retrieval is harnessed as a qualifying action for selecting the desired information. Texis simultaneously provides full-text, fielded and Boolean searching of both structured and unstructured content.
Texis powers real-time applications with zero-latency data insertion, providing immediate search availability of new data without waiting for scheduled index updates. Unlike other search tools, Texis ensures that all information which has been added to any table can be searched immediately -- regardless of whether the table has been indexed and regardless of whether it has been suggested that an index be maintained on that table or not. Sequential table space scans and index-based scans are efficiently managed by Texis so that the database can always be searched in the most optimized manner with the most current information available to the user.
Texis enables searchers to sort and group query results by any field(s) in the data. And Texis can quickly sort tens of thousands of hits or more. Other search tools either bog down sorting more than a few hundred items or else their sorting features are much more limited than the capabilities of Texis.
Texis allows you to treat the concatenation of any number of text fields as a single “virtual field.” As a single field you can create an index on the fields, search the fields and perform any other operation allowable on a field.
Texis has high-performance ability to intelligently query and manage databases containing natural language text, numeric values, standard data types, geographic information, images, video, audio and other payload data. While Texis excels at purposeful manipulation of textual information, it also performs useful mathematical operations on your data. You can construct queries that combine calculated values with text search.
Texis lets you create an unlimited number of independent search collections -- each with their own unique data types, fields, attributes or parameters. It also empowers users to submit queries to multiple search engines and/or multiple collections and have the results displayed together or combined.
Texis gives developers prototype-friendly customization tools, extreme flexibility, rapid deployments and a feature-rich API. It supports multiple Search User Interfaces that offer specially-defined views of query input and results for different audience types or even for each unique individual. Thunderstone's Texis imposes no user interface requirements. Texis Web Script (Vortex) maintains “neutrality” with regard to whatever HTML markup (or JavaScript or other user interface technology) is employed for the user results presentation.

Which enterprise search applications require the robustness and flexibility of Texis?

Texis is the premier solution when large-scale, mission-critical and/or complex information retrieval challenges call for full-text searching tightly integrated with traditional structured database querying. Businesses, governments, NGOs and educational institutions use Texis in a wide range of applications such as online catalogs, auctions, classifieds, automated categorization, litigation support, intelligence collection/analysis, risk assessment, quality control, CRM, knowledge discovery, document and multimedia management, internet publishing, vertical portals, real-time message handling, web searching and many others.

Thunderstone's Texis provides the ideal development platform for rapidly deployable, custom-designed applications that require both unstructured and structured types of searching:

Online catalogs contain unstructured text (product name, description, etc.) and structured content (style/size, price, in-stock availability, etc.) Users expect the ability to search by item description, to navigate by price range or to do both in combination.
Knowledge management systems demand very efficient and secure enterprise-wide information retrieval across multiple repositories that serve different types of users, who all want dynamic, context-sensitive views of defined content (structured data) with the ability to refine results through full-text searching (unstructured data).
A Thunderstone solution provider customer has deployed Texis in a "brute force" full-text search scenario for its DoD Intelligence Community customer, using Thunderstone's Texis to search the contents of a massive Oracle database in a counter-terrorism effort. Texis is being used as an adjunct to Oracle full-text search because of its ability to scale while still providing superior performance in both rate of ingestion as well as search. Thunderstone's Texis enables this customer to search across a 20 terabyte index, ingesting 70-80 million new records per hour and returning typical search results in < 10 seconds.
A Fortune 20 customer is using Thunderstone's Texis as the search platform for what they describe as the "single largest knowledge management system currently deployed at any corporation in the world." The application encompasses knowledge, people and processes, and it is used globally within the organization to access more than 30 terabytes of data. Users access the application 20+ million times per day, retrieving and sharing information from across the global enterprise. The application is the most-used corporate I.T. resource after e-mail.

Thunderstone's Texis lets users and developers incorporate their own unique knowledge and expertise into customized search solutions that easily integrate with other applications. For additional information call +1 216 820 2200 or visit us online at http://www.thunderstone.com.

Texis' Metamorph Compound Index

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

The METAMORPH and METAMORPH INVERTED indexes in Texis are used to improve the performance of text searches using full-text queries with LIKE, LIKEP, and the rest of the LIKE family. Often the query involves other values, which are used to either sort the results, or further restrict the results returned.

One example is in the Webinator application, which provides the option to sort the results by date. Historically, the way to improve the performance of the ORDER BY was to use an INVERTED INDEX. If you also wanted to do date range restriction, then you could add a regular INDEX as well.

The Metamorph compound index will provide better performance than the three indexes since all the data is available from a single index, and also requires less maintenance. For the query:

SELECT Url FROM html
WHERE Title\Description\Keywords\Meta\Body LIKE $query
AND Visited BETWEEN $first AND $last
ORDER BY Visited DESC;

You could create the index as:

CREATE METAMORPH INVERTED INDEX xhtmlbodv ON HTML(Title\Description\Keywords\Meta\Body, Visited);

Which is the CREATE INDEX statement you will find in the Webinator dowalk script.

If there are several fields that you might use in the query or ORDER BY, then you can specify all of them as additional fields. The order of the fields does not matter, and the engine may use any combination of them. If in Webinator you also wanted to allow searches and sorts based on the Depth field, you could add Depth to the index:

CREATE METAMORPH INVERTED INDEX xhtmlbodvd ON HTML(Title\Description\Keywords\Meta\Body, Visited, Depth);

Then, with the ability of Vortex to ignore parts of the query you could write a query:

That will allow efficient searching and ordering on any combination of Visited and Depth, as long as a query is specified for the LIKE.

The compound index can also be used for GROUP BY or other queries that can fully rely on the index data, e.g.:

SELECT Depth, count(*) from html
WHERE Title\Description\Keywords\Meta\Body LIKE $query
GROUP BY Depth;

Key facts

In a full-text index (any of the variations of METAMORPH INDEX) the first field specified must be the full-text field, and will be indexed accordingly.
The first field may be a virtual field, if you want to search across multiple database fields. In the above example we would search the Title, Description, Keywords, Meta and Body fields as if they were a single field.
The full-text index will only be used if the full-text field is being queried with a full-text query. In the above example, if there was no LIKE clause, or it was dropped by Vortex because it matches $null, then the METAMORPH INDEX would not be used.
The additional fields beyond the full-text field should be small, fixed size fields, most commonly dates and numbers.
Using too many additional fields can negate the performance benefits of having the index. Care should be taken to ensure that only those fields actually used in queries are represented in the index.
The total size of the additional fields should be small relative to the size of the record, and should not exceed a few hundred bytes per record.
The total size of additional indexed data (number or rows multiplied by size per row) should be no larger than 25% of physical memory on the server.
If you specify a VARCHAR(N) field as an additional field, you will get a warning message "Variable size warning". The index will still be created, and N bytes of the field will be indexed (where N is from the declaration of the field) for each row. If N is large, this will bloat the index, reducing performance.
Updating fixed size fields, including the additional fields can be done without causing the index to go out of date and needing to be updated. Updating the full-text field, or any variable sized field (e.g. VARCHAR, BLOB, INDIRECT) will still cause the index to require an update.
Parts of the where clause that use the compound should be grouped together with parentheses for maximum efficiency.

Thunderstone Provides Special Competitive Upgrade Offer for Google Mini Owners

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

CLEVELAND, OH — August 1, 2012 — Thunderstone announces a new program to assist Google Mini customers looking for a replacement for their current search appliance now that Google has announced the end of the Google Mini.

For customers upgrading to the Thunderstone Search Appliance, Thunderstone will honor the remaining warranty and support contract on the Google Mini as an extension to the standard two year support contract on a Thunderstone Search Appliance. In addition Thunderstone will provide assistance in the migration and a 30-day money back guarantee, so that the entire process is painless.

This will allow customers to install and run the Thunderstone Search Appliance alongside their existing search to experience the additional flexibility and results quality, all without losing any warranty period.

For 30 years Thunderstone Software has been dedicated to providing the best search solutions possible to government, corporate, and non-profit customers, with exceptional service and devotion to finding the right solution for the customer.

For further information call +1 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com/gmupgrade or email

Thunderstone Releases Webinator™ Web Index & Retrieval System Version 6 and Search Appliance Version 8 (1)

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

CLEVELAND, OH — Making it even easier to integrate high quality search into your website -- Webinator Version 6 and Search Appliance Version 8 are here.

New features include:

More intuitive searches, including Unicode support and accent-insensitive queries:
This improves non-English searches; e.g. "cœur" will also match "coeur", "resume" will match "resumé".
Enhanced search results, including multiple snippets and styled highlighting.
XML/SOAP API to ease integration of search into dynamic sites.
Meta Search to allow searching multiple profiles together in one transaction.
Results Authorization so unauthorized documents don't show up in search results.
HTTP/1.1 support including gzip compression to reduce crawl times and bandwidth utilization:
Reduces load on targeted servers, and potentially allows access to more content.
And much more: see the full list of new features here.

For further information call +1 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com or email

February 2011 Newsletter

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

February 2011 - Archive

TEXIS VERSION 6 RELEASED

The newest version of Texis, Version 6, is now in full release. New features include:

More intuitive searches, including Unicode support and accent insensitive searches.
Improved XML/XSLT support, including a new API for building XML based applications more easily.
HTTP/1.1 support including gzip compression to reduce crawl times and bandwidth utilization.
Enhanced options for showing search results, including multiple snippets and highlighting using CSS styles.
Many more... See a full list of Version 6 features here.

Call us today at 216-820-2200 to find out how the latest version of Texis can help you.

NEW PRODUCT SURVEY

Thunderstone Software is currently working on a new web-based email product. We'd like to hear about what you might be looking for in an email solution, from search to archiving to contact management and beyond. Please take a minute to fill out our brief survey and share your thoughts. Thanks!

TECH TIP: MULTICOLOR QUERY HIGHLIGHTING

One of the many new features of Texis 6 is styling matches when generating an abstract. Each term in the query can be highlighted in a different style (color, font, etc).

Search results for Historic airport

... On average, the airport will see one Xtra Airways flight per day. References Historic Wendover Airfield FAA Airport Master Record for ENV (Form 5010 PDF) External links Resources ...

This can be especially helpful when using a thesaurus or equivs, as it will help users realize which search terms the hits came from.

Search results for location destination

A large portion of the airport's commercial airline service occurs during the winter and spring months, as the area is a popular tourist destination and seasonal home for snowbirds ...

Highlighting can be done differently with 3 <fmt> flags:

%mI - generates CSS code in an inlinestyle attribute at every hit. The highlighting will then not be depend on any external resources.
- <fmt "%mIH" $query $text> gives:
 ... average, the airport will see ...
%mC - places unique cssclasses on each search hit. This allows you to apply your own customization by defining the class yourself.
- <fmt "%mCH" $query $text> gives:
 ... average, the airport will see ...
%mb - the previously existing method that bolds the matches is still supported.
- <fmt "%mbH" $query $text> gives:
 ... average, the airport will see ...

You can also highlight the query with itself to provide a legend of the highlighting styles as the "search results for" above: <fmt "%mIH" $query $query>

Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome. Send your email to .

Thunderstone Releases Texis Version 6

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

CLEVELAND, OH — The leading development environment for full-text database search applications just got even better -- Texis Version 6 is here.

New features available in Texis 6 include:

More intuitive searches, including Unicode support and accent-insensitive queries:
This improves non-English searches; e.g. "cœur" will also match "coeur", "resume" will match "resumé".
Improved XML/XSLT support, including a new API for building XML based applications more easily.
HTTP/1.1 support including gzip compression to reduce crawl times and bandwidth utilization:
Reduces load on targeted servers, and potentially allows access to more content.
Enhanced options for showing search results, including multiple snippets and styled highlighting:
Shows more query-relevant text in results, and allows full customization of query term presentation.
And much more: see the full list of new features here.

For almost 30 years Thunderstone Software has been dedicated to providing the best search solutions possible to government, corporate, and non-profit customers, with exceptional service and devotion to finding the right solution for the customer.

For further information call 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com or email

March 2010 Newsletter

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0400

March 2010 - Archive

PUBLIC SECTOR SEARCH APPLIANCE SAVINGS PROGRAM

As various states are providing appliance rebate programs to encourage consumers to switch to new energy efficient appliances we thought it only appropriate to offer our federal government GSA pricing (a savings of up to 32% over list prices) to all state and local governments to help with their budget constraints this spring.

Call our sales office today at 216-820-2200 to find out how switching to a Thunderstone Search Appliance can save you money today.

CUSTOMER QUOTE OF THE MONTH

"I'm impressed with vortex. You have so much functionality already put in to your language that I had to do by hand in perl." -- Gwen Zanin, Sr. Database Designer, The Chronicle of Higher Education

TECH TIP: NEW VS REFRESH

Once you've completed your first walk, you have a choice of how further walks should be performed. It's a choice between thoroughness and speed.

"New" crawls are started from scratch, just like the initial crawl. It takes your initial URLs, forgets everything else, and finds all the content again. The advantage is that you can be sure that every URL is checked on every walk, but the downside is it takes just as long as your initial walk. If your initial walk wasn't excessively long, this could be a feasible walking strategy.

If your initial walk took a week to finish, you might not want to do a New walk every time, though. Our "Refresh" walk schedules pages based on how often they change. The idea is that if a page hasn't changed in 6 months, we don't need to check it EVERY night. Only a subset of pages are checked on a refresh walk, with the more frequently changing pages checked more often than rarely changing ones.

The advantage of refresh walks is they can complete much faster than New walks, allowing your changing content to be updated much more frequently. The disadvantage is if a rarely-changing page DOES change, it might be a while before the refresh crawl checks it to notice the change.

Which type of walk is appropriate depends on your situation, the size of your content, and how quickly things need updated.

Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome. Send your email to .

State and Local Governments Offered Search Appliance Savings Program

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0400

CLEVELAND, OH — State and local governments are being offered a chance to reduce their IT budget by buying search solutions at the same price the Federal government negotiated, while at the same time gaining a level of customer service and flexibility that consistently surpasses the levels that have become the industry norm. In addition to these savings they will also save by only needing to license once compared to other solutions that require never-ending periodic relicensing.

The Thunderstone family of search solutions provides the following benefits:

Knowledgeable and accessible technical support. If you have a question or need any assistance call one of our qualified engineers.
A perpetual license, which means once you have the solution you never have to repurchase it.
Full trade-in credit if you need to expand your license.
A flexible range of solutions designed to work the way you want, including appliances, virtual appliances, software and hosted SaaS models.

For further information call 216-820-2200, visit www.thunderstone.com or email

February 2010 Newsletter

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0500

February 2010 - Archive

AVOIDING COMMON WEAKNESSES

The 2010 CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors was just released. Many of these most common errors can be avoided by using Vortex properly in your applications. For example:

The use of parameters when constructing SQL statements avoids SQL injection problems, as well as greatly simplifying code.
Vortex removes the need to worry about buffer sizes and array indexes, preventing overflows.
The default Vortex settings are designed to limit resource utilization when crawling and searching. These can of course be changed to suit your needs.

No programming language can prevent all errors, so you are encouraged to use the CWE/SANS list as a checklist when developing your application. If you have any questions about the functions that can help, for example by sanitizing input and output data, you can search our manual or call tech support.

HAPPENINGS

THUNDERSTONE ADDS A NEW PARTNER FOR SEARCH APPLIANCE, WEBINATOR AND TEXIS CATALOG SOLUTION SALES IN NORTH AMERICA AND THE ASIA PACIFIC MARKETS

We welcome the following organization to our growing Thunderstone Reseller/Channel Partner Program:

CustomWare Asia Pacific Pty Ltd
+1 888 707 0088
http://www.customware.net

Sudbury, MA-based freelance writer Paul Korzeniowski quoted Thunderstone's CEO John Turnbull in a January 6, 2010 Network Computing article entitled "Best And Worst Of Times For Enterprise Search." Korzeniowski wrote, in part:

Data expansion has been driving user interest in search systems. In most enterprises, storage requirements have been increasing at healthy rates, 10 percent on the low end and 100 percent in certain cases. "Many companies have generated information that can help employees do their job more efficiently, but often they cannot easily locate that data," stated John Turnbull, president and CEO of Thunderstone Software LLC. Consequently, search system design has been changing.

See http://www.networkcomputing.com/enterprise-search/the-enterprise-search-dichotomy.php for the full article.

TECH TIP: CRAWLING FILE SERVERS WITH YOUR SEARCH APPLIANCE

The Thunderstone Search Appliance isn't just for websites. You can also use it to crawl your file servers. The process is very similar — directories are crawled as "pages" with "links" to other directories and files, and the files themselves are processed just as if they were on a website.

Setup via "Network Filesystems & Shares"

The one difference is any file share needs to be mounted before it can be used in a crawl. The "Network Filesystems & Shares" section is where you manage your various mounts. You specify the server, the share, and the credentials that should be used to crawl it.

Once it's mounted, you'll see a Base URL you can use to crawl that file share. You can specify a subdirectory of the share as the starting point of your crawl, and you can crawl the same share in multiple profiles.

For example, you can mount the "officeDocs" share on your "files3" file server, and have the "hr" profile crawl "file://files3/officeDocs/hr/archive" while the "sales" profile crawls "file://files3/officeDocs/clients", etc.

Next month we'll talk about Results Authorization, which ensures your search users only get results for pages and files they're allowed to see.

Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome. Send your email to .

Thunderstone Blog: Customized Search Engine & Search Software

Thunderstone Releases Version 27

New search features include

Availability

Thunderstone Releases Version 25

New search features include

Availability

Thunderstone Releases Version 20

New features include

Improvements

Availability

Thunderstone Releases Version 19

New features include

Improvements

Availability

Thunderstone Releases Version 18

New features include

Improvements

Availability

A Solution to Google Site Search Being Discontinued

Replacing Google Site Search with Thunderstone

Upgrade to a Thunderstone Hosted Search

A Solution to DigitalGov Search Being Discontinued

Replacing DigitalGov Search with Thunderstone

Upgrade to a Thunderstone Hosted Search

Thunderstone Releases Version 17

New search features include

Availability

Thunderstone Releases Version 16

New crawl features include

Availability

The Benefits of Thunderstone's Investment Protection Program

The Benefits of Thunderstone's Investment Protection Program

Search Solutions That Grow With Your Organization

Searching for the Right Solution

Upgrade from Google Mini with Thunderstone

Out With the Old Search Appliance and In With the New

Search Appliance Solutions from Thunderstone

Thunderstone Releases Search Appliance Version 15

New crawl features include

New search features include

Availability

The Benefits of a Custom Search Engine Tool

What Exactly is TEXIS?

What Makes it Different from Other Search Engines?

Fully-Integrated Full Text Search Engines from Thunderstone

Thunderstone Releases Webinator™ Web Index & Retrieval System Version 13

Thunderstone Offers Product Catalog Search

Thunderstone Offers Version 9 of the Thunderstone Search Appliance

Texis Overview

What makes Texis different from other search engines and databases?

Thunderstone's Texis has a number of characteristics and built-in advantages that differentiate it from other search solutions:

Which enterprise search applications require the robustness and flexibility of Texis?

Texis' Metamorph Compound Index

Key facts

Thunderstone Provides Special Competitive Upgrade Offer for Google Mini Owners

Thunderstone Releases Webinator™ Web Index & Retrieval System Version 6 and Search Appliance Version 8 (1)

February 2011 Newsletter

February 2011 - Archive

CONTENTS

TEXIS VERSION 6 RELEASED

NEW PRODUCT SURVEY

TECH TIP: MULTICOLOR QUERY HIGHLIGHTING

Thunderstone Releases Texis Version 6

March 2010 Newsletter

March 2010 - Archive

CONTENTS

PUBLIC SECTOR SEARCH APPLIANCE SAVINGS PROGRAM

CUSTOMER QUOTE OF THE MONTH

TECH TIP: NEW VS REFRESH

State and Local Governments Offered Search Appliance Savings Program

February 2010 Newsletter

February 2010 - Archive

CONTENTS

AVOIDING COMMON WEAKNESSES

HAPPENINGS

THUNDERSTONE ADDS A NEW PARTNER FOR SEARCH APPLIANCE, WEBINATOR AND TEXIS CATALOG SOLUTION SALES IN NORTH AMERICA AND THE ASIA PACIFIC MARKETS

TECH TIP: CRAWLING FILE SERVERS WITH YOUR SEARCH APPLIANCE

Setup via "Network Filesystems & Shares"