[ZODB-Dev] Searching/wo/Zope

[Tim Peters]

[Tamas Hegedus]
> You have released the ZODB/ZEO as a stand alone package. But there is no
> stand alone searching possibility. Why? This just does not make any
> sense.

It makes sense if you know why ZODB is released this way ;-)  Primarily,
it's so that people running Zope can install ZEO servers on other machines,
without needing to install Zope there too.  If others can make use of
standalone ZODB too, that's great, but it's not the primary intent.

There are no current plans to add index/catalog/search code to the ZODB
distribution.  That's usually viewed as an application-level problem, and
it's up to applications to solve it in ways best suited for their particular
needs.

As an example, I'm the titular head of the SpamBayes project:

    http://spambayes.sourceforge.net

and we're in the process there of adopting ZODB as the default backend
database.  While SpamBayes needs to search its database frequently and
heavily, there's nothing ZODB could add that we would use!  Instead we'll
build the SB database directly out of ZODB's BTrees, whose builtin searching
abilities are a perfect fit to what SB needs.

Are you quite sure that someone else's idea of a general-purpose searching
facility is something you'd actually use?  Don't underestimate the
difficulties in crafting a "one size fits all" approach here that actually
fits anyone ;-)