[HP4GU-FAQ] Egroups Search/Spoilers

[Neil Ward]

>If you notice what the highest message number we have
>is, you'll see it's 7815.  Clearly (to me) eGroups has
>set an arbitrary search scope of 5000 messages. 
>Unfortunately, we didn't test THAT aspect of the
>search mechanism before declairing "They've got a
>seach mechanism!"  Who would have thought.

Aha!  We had a similar problem (I think) with our web-based database at
work.  The programmers set a maximum return of 999 records which were
presented, by default, in reverse chronological order.  They set a limit to
avoid slowing the searches down, on the assumption that most searches would
return fewer than 999 hits (not true, unfortunately).  The only problem was
that if a search yielded, say 1,200 hits, the programme would still only
return the first 999 and only *then* would it sort them by date.  This meant
that the latest things added, which were at the end of the unsorted list,
weren't in the 999 and it looked like we were really behind with our
updates. When I asked them to change the limit to 50,000 all was well (and
the searches were not really much slower).

I agree that, if there is a 5000 limit in eGroups, it may be an arbitrary
setting that could be changed really easily.

Also, eGroups was totally down for 5+ hours between midnight and 5.30am PDT,
for technical reasons (that was early morning to midday here).  Maybe they
did something - made some changes - overnight?

Neil

            Flying-Ford-Anglia

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   "Then, dented, scratched and steaming, 
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 [Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets]

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