Oracle Text Makes Search Scores Adjustable
July 29, 2012
Oracle Text Search lets you sort search result by score according to IT Newscast’s
article, “Adjusting the Score on Oracle Text search results.”
They explain the process in laymen’s terms as:
“In theory, the more relevant the search term is to the document, the higher ranked Score it should receive. But in practice, the relevancy score can seem somewhat of a mystery. It’s not entirely clear how it ranks the importance of some documents over others based on the search term. And often times, once a word appears a certain number of times within a document, the Score simply maxes out at 100 and the top results can be difficult to discern from one another.”
To index, search and analyze text both in the Oracle database and on the web, Oracle Text uses standard SQL. This software is capable of utilizing keyword search, context queries, Boolean operations, mixed thematic queries, HTML/XML and more.
It can also perform linguistic analysis and support multiple languages with their advanced relevance ranking technology. There are additional features available for those who need even more advanced search methods like clustering and classification.
Oracle has been a leader in database software for more than three and a half decades. Their knowledge on adjusting search results should not come as a shock. Oracle is one company that will probably remain on top with enterprise grade applications and platform services.
Jennifer Shockley, July 29, 2012
Too Many Cooks in the SharePoint Kitchen
July 27, 2012
Bjorn Furuknap brings us another irreverent look at the world of SharePoint, this time focusing on the quantity of SharePoint developers. In Furuknap’s SharePoint Corner, he brings us this entry, “How Many SharePoint Developers Are There Really?”
In its publicity for its purchase of Yammer, Microsoft boasts of how many developers they have building on SharePoint.
Furuknap states:
What’s very odd, though, is that Microsoft claims there are 700,000 ‘developers building on the platform’. With these numbers, that means that for every SharePoint customer, there are over 10 developers. Read that again: For every SharePoint customer, there are more than 10 developers . . . It can mean one of two things: 1) There are far too many developers out there and a lot of them are unemployed. Good for businesses, if true. 2) SharePoint is a platform so complex that you need to pay, on average, ten people to do nothing but develop on SharePoint. Bad for SharePoint, if true.
Let’s go with the idea that SharePoint may be too complex for its own good. What is to be done? Most organizations cannot afford a herd of developers to customize SharePoint into a usable infrastructure. For organizations in that situation we recommend exploring a smart third party solution like Fabasoft Mindbreee Enterprise. Working as a standalone solution, or in conjunction with an existing SharePoint infrastructure, Fabasoft Mindbreeze not only streamlines your enterprise needs, but also integrates the rest of your electronic data repositories via Connectors.
Do not let the complexities of SharePoint bankrupt your IT department. See a high return on your investment by choosing Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 27, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Interesting Reads
July 26, 2012
There is a very enlightening source of reading references to be found in Jeff Huang’s “Best Paper Awards in Computer Science.” He conveniently provided a list of informative papers neatly categorized by area of expertise, like artificial intelligence or human computer interaction.
While scrolling down the list, two interesting papers seemed to jump right out.
The first of which, “Unsupervised Part-of-Speech Tagging with Bilingual Graph-Based Projections,” describes a new approach, as:
“A novel approach for inducing unsupervised part-of-speech taggers for languages that have no labeled training data, but have translated text in a resource-rich language. Our method does not assume any knowledge about the target language (in particular no tagging dictionary is assumed), making it applicable to a wide array of resource-poor languages. We use graph-based label propagation.”
The second paper, “How does search behavior change as search becomes more difficult?” Describes some research on search and their conclusions, with:
“When having difficulty in finding information, users start to formulate more diverse queries, they use advanced operators more, and they spend a longer time on the search result page as compared to the successful tasks. The results complement the existing body of research focusing on successful search strategies.”
Researchers are consistently developing models to predict and understand changes in text entry. Sadly, most of the models fail to account for varying system parameters and the ever changing human factor, nor their evolving relationship.
The latter explains the dumbing of search…but they were interesting reads.
Jennifer Shockley, July 26, 2012
Sign In as Difference User in SharePoint 2013
July 26, 2012
The “Sign in as a Different User” menu option has been done away with in SharePoint 2013. Microsoft has made it known that they have worked to make SharePoint 2013 a more streamlined, efficient, out-of-the-box solution, and in doing so are discouraging users from customization. However, some of the features that were removed still need to be navigated in some way. The “Sign in as a Different User” command is one example. Nick Grattan’s SharePoint Blog gives us a workaround in, “Sign in as Different User and SharePoint 2013.”
Grattan states:
This ‘Sign in as Different User’ menu item is very useful when testing applications, but it can lead to problems especially when opening documents, say in Microsoft Word. So, it may be for these reasons that the option has been removed in SharePoint 2013. You can add the menu item back in, but I would suggest only doing this on test or development SharePoint servers. To do this, repeat this edit on all servers in your SharePoint farm:
What follows is a step-by-step list of instructions to help you successfully complete the function.
For users who are concerned in general about the lack of customization options in SharePoint 2013, we would encourage the addition of a smart third-party solution. For instance, Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise can stand alone or work alongside an existing SharePoint infrastructure to increase efficiency and intuitiveness. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is a trusted industry leader based in Austria, and consistently wins recognition for by KM World.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 26, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Governance Listed as Top Challenge in Enterprise
July 25, 2012
A new Gartner report shows that more SharePoint users are failing in the category of governance than in any other. SharePoint Joel gives his opinion on governance in, “Governance the #1 Challenge to Managing SharePoint.”
SharePoint Joel begins:
According to Gartner 66% of SharePoint Customers do not believe they have adequate governance. (Based on a recent Gartner survey) Governance can be defined as a set of defined roles, responsibilities, policies, and procedures that will help your company to proactively manage your information technology resources in a way that maximizes business value.
But governance does not have to be an ongoing struggle or an agonizing process. Third party solutions like Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise can work with an existing SharePoint installation to add efficiency and functionality. Fabasoft Folio Connector works with Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise to specifically address the issue of governance.
Fabasoft Folio is the standard software product for Enterprise Content Management, Collaboration, Compliance Management, agile Business Processes and Information Governance. The solution provides uniform, reliable and controlled management of digital content in the enterprise. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise links Fabasoft Folio for uniform enterprise-wide information access.
Do not continue to struggle with governance issues, allow Fabasoft Mindbreeze and their suite of smart solutions to ease your enterprise troubles.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 25, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
How to use Oracle Full Text Search in an Entity Framework
July 25, 2012
Oracle has the solutions, but how do you use Oracle full text search in an entity framework? We are not sure what this means, but the info you need can be found in Devart’s article, “Using Oracle Full-Text Search in Entity Framework.”
Devart began with:
“We decided to meet the needs of our users willing to take advantage of the full-text search in Entity Framework and implemented the basic Oracle Text functionality in our Devart dotConnect for Oracle ADO.NET Entity Framework provider. For working with Oracle Text specific functions in LINQ to Entities queries, the new OracleTextFunctions class is used, which is located in the Devart.Data.Oracle.Entity.dll assembly.”
It enables working with such Oracle Text functions as:
- CONTAINS
- CATSEARCH
- MATCHES
- SCORE
- MATCH_SCORE
Devart presents a very detailed sales pitch for OraDirect, or dotConnect as their calling it now. Whatever name you choose, the gist is the software offers native connectivity to the Oracle database, tools and technology. They also offer a customized set of their own tools to increase Dataset productivity such as Dataset Wizard and Dataset Manager.
If you can decipher their article, than the wisdom of the Oracle is yours. For the most part this article reads like a coder handbook, and I am not a coder. If you happen to speak that very enlightened language, you will probably grasp Devart’s meaning a lot quicker than this gosling. If not, maybe the Oracle will see you some other day.
Jennifer Shockley, July 25, 2012
Streamlining SharePoint at Work
July 24, 2012
On the Microsoft SharePoint Blog, Chirag Patel addresses readers’ questions about what SharePoint can do for them professionally with his entry, “8 Easy Ways to Change SharePoint at Work.”
Before diving into his list of eight tips, Patel gives an introduction to his ideas:
With endless possibilities and boundless optimism, SharePoint obviously has a great deal more to offer and [sic] the manner in which it is implemented and governed. You will also find mountain of articles and how to guides on the Internet but my response almost always touch on the following areas. In this post I will share 8 easy ways that by themselves may not dramatically improve productivity, but combined can result in significant performance gains and hopefully help you leverage SharePoint functionality.
In terms of leveraging SharePoint functionality, not every organization can afford a team of SharePoint developers in-house or contracted out. For these organizations, a smart third party solution may be a good addition to an existing SharePoint infrastructure, or as a standalone piece.
A third party solution with good reviews and user feedback is Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise. With a listed of notable technology partners, Fabasoft Mindbreeze can ensure high functionality with limited additional effort. For users who have to choose between intense customization of SharePoint and adding a third party solution, many will find a third party solution like Mindbreeze to be the least stressful option.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 24, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
More Explanation of Predictive Coding
July 24, 2012
Predictive coding is the best thing to happen to eDiscovery since its conception, but it has been hard to find an article that goes into strict detail about how it works. Mondaq finally answered the call to explain how the litigation coding works in “Predicting the Future of Predictive Coding.” It first gives the prerequisite paragraph about what predictive coding is, uses an example of hand sifting through paper, and explains about cost savings.
Then it gets into the meat:
“A recent study by Rand Corp., which includes 57 case studies from eight large corporations, shows that the cost of e-discovery can be grouped into three main categories: collection, processing and review. Amazingly, the review phase accounted for 73 percent of the costs incurred during e-discovery. Predictive coding works to drastically reduce the number of documents that are manually reviewed by lawyers.”
The process typically works in this way. Lawyers review a small document sampling and code them according to subject matter or relevance. The litigation software then studies the sampling and applies it to a larger document set. Lawyers perform quality control checks to make sure the correct relevant documents are pulled up, drastically reducing manual searching and increasing accuracy. Predictive as an adjective is now doing more work than the previous favorite “big data.” My hyperbole radar is humming.
Stephen E Arnold, July 24
Sponsored by HighGainBlog
Crowd Sourced Dictionary Holds Promise
July 24, 2012
Dictionaries become part of our lives shortly after we start to read and many of us remember the classic textbook copy of Webster. The old texts seem to gather dust, and the addition of a crowd source dictionary will not increase their popularity.
A new dictionary is in the works according to Stylist Magazine’s article “The World’s First Crowd-Sourced Dictionary.” Dictionary publishers Collins are inviting the general public to contribute to their online dictionary, and become involved in the evolution of the English language.
This new online reference will contain not only words, but some of the phrases from slang between friends to abbreviations, jargon or made-up buzzwords, all input by the users.
Anyone can be a part of the process and submitting content is simple, as:
“Users just need to log and submit their phrase of choice, which will go through an editorial evaluation and if accepted appear on the definition page, with your name forever imprinted as the creator of that word.”
“If there’s a word you use with your friends that you think is absolute genius, now’s your chance to let the world know. Collins will also giving away prizes to a person who submits a word every day until the 31st August 2012.”
The thing that makes Collins stand out from other user content sources like Wikipedia is the moderation and approval aspect. A crowd sourced dictionary is not only an interesting concept, but may bring the occasional chuckle as we watch trendy buzzwords come and go.
Jennifer Shockley, July 24, 2012
Quote to Note: Manage the Decline
July 23, 2012
I snipped a quotation from the Wall Street Journal, dead tree edition, this morning (July 23, 2012). On page B-6 the “Idol Auditions New Judges” write up included this gem:
American Idol is a juggernaut franchise that still has many season left but once a program starts to fall from its pear, you are working to minimize the decline, said Kris Magel, director of national broadcast at Initiative, a media buying firm…
I highlighted the phrase which I think is a keeper. I want to use this idea to characterize a number of search and content processing vendors’ actions in the closing months of 2012. With the shift to open source technologies beginning to gain momentum, many information retrieval companies, regardless of the spin in their marketing collateral, are likely to be working to maintain revenues. Growth may be tough. With funds in short supply for some firms, the white knight notion of an acquisition to get talented people (an acq-hire) may be galloping into the sunset. Trigger words for me now include predictive anything (analytics, tagging, coding, what have you), customer support or customer relationship management, and big data. Words do not equate with revenue in the tough months ahead.
Love that phrase, “minimize the decline.”
Stephen E Arnold, July 23, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
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