Re: [xacml-users] Archived Mails!

[Robin Cover <robin@oasis-open.org>]

Thanks, Farrukh.

> The following google search string does not find your message in the
> archives:
> site:lists.oasis-open.org/archives/xacml-users/ robin

Latency?  I would not expect Google to crawl/index all OASIS
web pages hourly; on the other hand, I don't know what the periodicity
is, nor whether indexing is complete.  In the past I collected evidence
that Google indexing is NOT necessarily complete, as we would require
for a dedicated local search facility.

As to the meta-comment:

> Should'nt OASIS web site provide an explcit way to search the archives? This
> seems like a significant oversight
> that can easily be remedied.

Of course.  Obviously.  Agreed 110%.  If you were to ask OASIS management
(I am not personally in any management role) for an explanation as
to why dedicated search for email list archives is not supported,
I suspect you would hear the answer "inadequate resources..."

Members do routinely express frustration with the lack of appropriate
search tools.  If you would like to complain louder or in some
different way, various communication channels are available:

1. oasis-member-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org (no subscription required to post)
2. oasis-public-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org (subscription may be required)
3. Input to OASIS Board: 'oasis-board-comment' oasis-board-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
4. chairs@lists.oasis-open.org (send comment to this list as/though a 'Chair')

I have advocated for OASIS search facilities over several years,
and wrote a requirements document to help move things along [1].
You are welcome to review/critique that document if you'd like.
But the requirements are not rocket science, and W3C has implemented
a fairly sensible model that supports fielded search (as an
example):

http://www.w3.org/Search/Mail/Public/
http://www.w3.org/Search/Mail/Public/advanced_search?resultsperpage=20&page=1&sortby=date

When it became apparent that dedicated search for email list archives would
not be implemented at OASIS any time soon, I undertook a private initiative to
get buy-in and permission for MarkMail indexing of the OASIS lists.  It should
supplement/augment (not serve as substitute or replacement for) the dedicated
search facilities that I hope OASIS will eventually provide.  W3C and many other
prestigious organizations use MarkMail indexing to augment their local search
tools.  Increasingly, we have heard requests from OASIS members for MarkMail
index/search of OASIS publicly accessible lists.

http://markmail.org/

2008-10-30:

"Searching 5,810 lists and 32,712,171 messages. First list
started in November 1992. There are 3,882 active lists,
recently accumulating 27,511 messages per day..."

"MarkMail Announces Search Support for java.net Mailing List Archives"
http://xml.coverpages.org/MarkMail-JavaDotNet-Announce.html

"World Wide Web Consortium Lists: 400,000 Emails"
http://xml.coverpages.org/newsletter/news2008-03-18.html#cite1

"Searching Mailing Lists with MarkMail"
http://xml.coverpages.org/newsletter/news2008-07-02.html#cite6

"MarkMail Provides Amazing Search Capabilities"
http://xml.coverpages.org/newsletter/news2008-01-10.html#cite2

"Markmail for Email Archiving and Search Exceeds 5.5 Million Messages"
http://xml.coverpages.org/newsletter/news2008-01-10.html#cite1

"Mark Logic: An XQuery Company to Watch"
http://xml.coverpages.org/newsletter/news2008-04-29.html#cite7

  - Robin Cover



[1]

At the request of the Board IT Infrastructure Committee (ITC),
I once wrote a document "User Requirements: Searching OASIS
Email List Archives" (2006-11-20) which began as follows:

"This draft document fulfills an action item taken at the
2006-11-06 Board IT Infrastructure Committee (ITC) meeting:
to prepare a provisional set of user requirements for
searching OASIS email list archives. This draft [.01] is
not intended to be complete: it is offered as an instrument
to enable key stakeholders to identify major categories of
missing requirements, and particular (essential) user
requirements that may be missing.

Problem Statement

The OASIS email list archives need to be searchable.
Attempts have been made at various times, for various
collections, to support search. At the present time
[2006-10], all these search facilities have been disabled,
are completely broken, or are barely functional. Users
are required to depend upon personal email archives on
disk, or on public search engines, neither of which
provides a complete solution...

------------


On Thu, 30 Oct 2008, Farrukh Najmi wrote:

>
>
> Robin Cover wrote:
>
> ...
>> For any particular list, you can construct a query for
>> Google like this (type in your browser address box, ENTER):
>> 
>> site:lists.oasis-open.org/archives/xacml-users/ xacml
>> 
>> That would search all the archived messages in the 'xacml-users'
>> list archive for the word 'xacml' (uh... not too useful)
>> 
>> better example: search for the word 'schema'
>> 
>> site:lists.oasis-open.org/archives/xacml-users/ schema
>
> Hi Robin,
>
> The following google search string does not find your message in the 
> archives:
>
> site:lists.oasis-open.org/archives/xacml-users/ robin
>
> Should'nt OASIS web site provide an explcit way to search the archives? This 
> seems like a significant oversight
> that can easily be remedied.
>
>
>
> -- 
> Regards,
> Farrukh Najmi
>
> Web: http://www.wellfleetsoftware.com
>
>
>