IBM Search Woes? Some Help Available

November 18, 2010

IBM has just released some new tips to troubleshooting search issues for its Lotus Web Content Management (WCM).

After a brief description and illustration of the WCM search flow, the guide continues by presenting a method for running a trace on the search to identify where the problem lies. Apparently, the real problem is that the problem could be lurking anywhere within the process: with the initial seed list generation, the search crawler, the search component or the DCS conversion.

The next step after running the trace is to find where you fall in the documented “10 most common WCM search problems”:

1. Seed list is failing to fetch the content source URL
2. Crawler is aborting
3. URL has wrong host and port
4. Incorrect search results, or no results returned
5. WCM Links are not loading in the context of the portal for seed list 1.0
6. WCM search in a Virtual Portal is not working
7. Custom metadata is not displaying in the results
8. Problems when using Web Seal
9. Collection is missing or is empty
10. Server is running Out of Memory during search crawl

To state the obvious, this is quite a hefty list. Each of the ten problems are discussed in detail, some of which resulting from more than one potential cause. The recommended fixes are at a technical level that may not be conducive to the programming faint-at-heart, which is interesting for an application that touts tools designed for business professionals and content owners, not IT experts.

Scrolling through this tome of a troubleshooting manual a few times leaves one curious as to the efficiency of this program even on its better days, or the level of resources required to operate this beast. After perusing the entire guide it is clear that IBM’s WCM search function has some serious behind-the-scenes kinks to work out and perhaps even a patch to be issued if they truly want to circumvent those IT gurus.

Sara Rogers, November 18, 2010

Freebie

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Enterprise, News, Search, Technology

Comments

Comments are closed.

Search the site
Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive

Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.