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Administration

Omnidex Indexing

Omnidex provides a wide variety of indexing capabilities. The simplest applications may simply require a few indexes to be added, but other applications may use many more indexing capabilities. It is useful to get a quick overview of the indexing capabilities of Omnidex. Customers commonly purchase Omnidex for its basic indexing capabilities, only to discover there is more more available.


Concepts | Options | Creation | Strategies | ActiveCounts | PowerSearch | AutoComplete | Text | Advanced | Applications

Indexing Concepts

Omnidex takes a completely different approach to indexing that other databases. Instead of adding a single index here and there, administrators are encouraged to index all of the columns used in criteria, table joins, aggregations, ordering, and in certain circumstances, even retrievals. Using this approach, most queries will be fulfilled through the indexes without having to access the database at all.

That being said, indexing is not the answer to every problem. There are times to use indexes and times to avoid them.

Use indexes for … Avoid indexes for …
isolating a small number of rows retrieving a large number of rows
processing complex searches single-use databases
using more flexible search options
obtaining counts and aggregations
joining multiple tables
ordering a query result

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Indexing Options

Omnidex has many index types and index options, allowing the administrator to tailor Omnidex for the needs of the application.

  • Standard Omnidex Indexes provide the bulk of Omnidex functionality. These indexes are placed on columns that are involved in Omnidex criteria, table joins, aggregations, and ordering. Omnidex indexes can also be used to retrieve data without having to access the database.
  • QuickText Indexes are designed for small blocks of text, such as names, addresses, descriptions, and general text. QuickText Indexes parse the contents of the column so that each word is indexed separately, providing basic text searches at the same speed as Omnidex Indexes.
  • FullText Indexes are designed for large blocks of text, such as abstracts, articles, and text documents. FullText Indexes index each word in the column, as well as the position of each word in the field to aid in providing relevancy scores. Queries can use special syntax to require that one word be a certain distance from another word, or adjacent as a phrase.

Omnidex supports options for controlled case sensitivity, phonetic searching and excluded words. Omnidex also supports indexing options that improve queries across multiple tables, storing table join information directly in the index.

Omnidex allows multiple columns to be indexed together, creating Index Groups. A search against the index group automatically searches across all of the columns, even if some of the columns are located in a parent table and other columns are located in child tables.

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Index Creation

Indexing Strategies

The simplest strategy used in Omnidex is to index everything, or at least everything that is involved in the queries. This strategy immediately services a wide variety of queries. Most applications then benefit from analyzing the queries and using specific strategies for optimizing table joins, aggregations, grouping and ordering.

Omnidex administrators will strive to have as much of the query processed within the index as possible. A query is consider fully optimized when all aspects are fulfilled by the indexes. In fact, queries that return counts, aggregations, or a few data columns can be fulfilled without ever accessing the data itself, even when the statements involve many table joins, complex criteria, group and ordering.

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ActiveCounts

ActiveCounts is a feature of Omnidex that allows counts to be an interactive, visible part of any search. With ActiveCounts, the user can choose their own path through the data, seeing the available values appear at each step of the search, informed by counts along the way. This approach is similar to the way the user thinks, and the counts allow them to see the ramifications of their choice before they even make it.

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PowerSearch

AutoComplete

Advanced Strategies

Application Strategies

Additional Resources

See also:

 
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admin/indexing/home.1327080194.txt.gz · Last modified: 2016/06/28 22:38 (external edit)