In addition to RT indexes, it also brings preforked and threaded modes,
string attributes, full SphinxQL support (with access to all searchd functions),
advanced features such as hitless and blended indexing, optimized index
format, and a lot more. A complete list
of new 1.10-beta features is available in documentation.

How stable are RT indexes
and can one use those in production? Pretty much, especially when backed
with a Full or Premium support package
to guarantee priority fixes and emergency support respectively.
RT indexes are already deployed in production by several early adopters,
and are reported to work well. Even though we’ve been focusing on functionality
and stability rather than performance for this release, the latter is also
reasonable.

And that’s exactly what that “beta” tag is supposed to mean:
while there are things missing from RT indexes, and might be bugs
found in both RT and other new features, no major issues are
however known. Plus the pre-existing features should be as
stable as ever.

And yes, with SphinxQL, RT indexes, transactions, crash recovery
and other goodies Sphinx now feels almost real close to a database. Except that
our full-text searches are still fast!

View full post on Sphinx search engine news

We are not doing a booth this year, so if you’d like to meet
either myself, Andrew Aksyonoff (technical honcho, fingers besides
most of the code), or Richard Kelm (sales/customer support honcho,
voice behind that 888 number), please do get in touch upfront.
I’m staying for a few more days in SF Bay area so we’re not really
bound to meeting at conference site on the conference dates.

Speaking of which, that also might be a good occasion for a quick
onsite visit either in SF Bay (preferred) or generally in the US.
Call us at +1-888-333-1345 or email to arrange that.

And for those who can’t attend MySQL UC and hear us talking,
we’re now blogging. News section on the frontpage isn’t a really
properly fitting format for everything that can be shared, which
is probably one of the reasons it’s updated so infrequently.
So check out our new Sphinx blog
for more things Sphinx: articles, tips, general musings, fun facts,
you name it. The blog even comes prefilled.

Last but not least, despite the announcments, we’re still mostly
busy coding rather talking or blogging most of the time. And those
activities tend to offset other ones (like documenting and packaging)
lately. Which is, for instance, why real-time updates are in fact
already available from public SVN trunk
but not in a tarball or RPM form just yet.

So do get in touch. Whether it’s attending a talk, following a blog,
meeting at the conference, or volunteering to help us with something,
we’re looking forward to meet you!

View full post on Sphinx search engine news

We are going to work on that. But even the longest journey begins
with a first step. Time to make that step.

Over 15 months, over 700 revisions, and about 70 new features since
the previous “release” tag, Sphinx 0.9.8-release is finally out.
As usual, source tarball and Win32 binaries are available in the
Downloads section.

The complete list of new features
since 0.9.7 is available in the documentation. With 70 entries,
it’s too big to copy here, and had to be split in several sections
for the doc. It does not include bugfixes at all, cause that
would make it too big even for the doc. (Also, I’m too lazy to go through
all the commits and summarize all the fixes we did over the year).

The complete changelog since RC2
is also in the documentation. (This one includes the fixes.)
There were no new features in the engine itself since 0.9.8-rc2,
because we intentionally froze it. Nevertheless, we did some
additions to the whole package:

• added Ruby API and pure C API;
• added network timeout and error parameters to PHP API;
• added sphinx-min.conf sample file;
• added –without-iconv switch to configure.

Some trivia about 0.9.8-release:

• 0.9.8 is revision 1371;
• 0.9.7 is revision 606;
• 0.9.8 source size is almost precisely 2 times the 0.9.7 source size;
• automated testing suite runs 33 tests, 250 subtests (meaning 250 different config variants), and
  verifies 1695 queries against manually checked reference results;
• creating the unified documentation, ie. documenting all the sphinx.conf features and API calls,
  took 5 all-night-long bursts to complete (and then some daylight polishing that does not count);
• the only bugfix mentioned in the list of changes since 0.9.7 is the fix that enabled Sphinx to run on SPARC and ARM.

Also in the news, we’re among the finalists in SourceForge Community Choice Awards 2008!
Sphinx is in the shortlists for “Best Project”, “Best Project for the Enterprise”,
and, somewhat unexpectedly for me, “Most Likely to Be the Next $1B Acquisition”.
Many thanks to all who voted for Sphinx during the nominations!
Now is the time to vote again in the 2nd round. There are several quite
popular competitors (such as OpenOffice), so please spread the word
as much as you can.

As promised, the next update is going to be 0.9.9 alpha. We’ve already got some nice new features
there for you, but need to merge all the fixes from 0.9.8 and eliminate some known crashes.
In the meantime, have fun with 0.9.8, be sure to report everything that resembles a bug,
and vote for Sphinx again. Thanks!

View full post on Sphinx search engine news

Speaking of months, we’ve been silent (on the website) for a while. Not really
intentionally, rather just because a whole lot of things happened in the meantime,
making me uber-busy, and thus postponing the release rollout somewhat past the point
when it was due. For one, October was especially busy; in late September the update
rollout was scheduled for October, 1st, but.. you see the calendar. I’d rant about
all the events leading to this much of a deadline slip if they were not that numerous.
On the brighter side, the update includes more fixes this way.

And speaking of events, here goes a new section called
Presentations. For now,
it only carries our own talks; but please submit yours too! I’ve just added new
slides from 2 conferences held this fall in Russia that I talked at. Going to translate
the slides to English as time permits. Some slides back from 2007 are also there
(marked as new based on the time of addition, not the talk).

Community contributors also did a bunch of work in the meantime, resulting in
a couple of new localized articles
(in Italian and Turkish), and more contributed software -
namely, a patch that adds Firebird support, Drupal modules, Haskell API port,
and PECL API port. Of these, I’d especially like to highlight PECL API port.
It’s based on libsphinxclient (bundled with Sphinx), works as a drop-in replacement
to the reference PHP API, and is naturally faster (though we’ve yet to see
the benchmarks). Cheers to Tony, Pierre, Johannes, Markus, Chris, Eelco,
Ludovico, and Salih!

Last but not least, likely the final teaser for 0.9.9. It adds a number
of shiny new features, it now runs in production on several sites, and the only thing
that currently holds the alpha release from going public is actually simply the
lack of documentation on those features. Ah, and it is where the most changes went,
which is one of the reasons why the change log for 0.9.8.1 is so small.

View full post on Sphinx search engine news

• added select-list feature w/full expressions support
• added arbitrary brackets/negations nesting support to query language
• added config reload on SIGHUP
• added signed 64bit attrs support (sql_attr_bigint directive)
• added persistent connections, UNIX-socket, and multi-interface support (Open(), Close(), listen)
• added kill-lists support
• added MS SQL (aka SQL Server) source type support
• added inplace inversion of .spa and .spp (inplace_enable, 1.5-2x less disk space for indexing)
• added multiforms support (multiple source words in wordforms file)
• …and 20+ other features in the changelog

Normally this major changeset would be declared an alpha. However, thanks to
brave testers, 0.9.9 already runs in production on several sites. And also its test
coverage is actually even better than that of 0.9.8. So we can light-heartedly
call it beta (as in “no known major bugs”).

Bundled website update includes a few extra links, of which I personally would claim
C# .NET API port and Ubuntu package (in Contributed software
section) most interesting. And, as you see, we’ve also refit News and Docs sections; you now can (anonymously)
comment on the posts and submit ‘em to places like Digg. Testing time!

View full post on Sphinx search engine news

When pizza delivery first began, it was considered quite the luxury and instead of something we just expect today. Grocery delivery, online movie rentals and on-demand movies are all conveniences that Americans are more than happy to indulge in- especially if that saves them a little time. Online banking has been available for quite some time, but another time saving advantage has just been announced for people who do online banking and would like one more reason to stay at home- check cashing.

A new banking software as a service (SaaS) option for check cashing has just been announced. The software allows bank customers to deposit checks into their checking and savings accounts without having to purchase new hardware or leave their house!
By using just a flatbed scanner that many people already have in their homes, people can scan their own checks right to their bank accounts via their own computers using this new software as a service (SaaS)option. The online software called NCR APTRA Consumer Passport and can be integrated with any online financial institution a person is banking with.

Why Would Consumers Want This At Home Banking Option?
Being able to deposit checks remotely was previously available only to businesses, but now anyone who needs to deposit a check can do so using this software as a service option. Why would this be of interest to many people if the paper check that we know today is slowly going digital?

• Small businesses can save time depositing checks at their business instead of running off to the bank.
• It’s an ideal household convenience for cashing rebate checks or a child’s birthday check.
• Persons with disabilities can stay in the comfort of their home to cash a check.
• Anyone who doesn’t have convenient access to their bank can cash a check at home.

How it Works
Once the check is endorsed, both sides the check is scanned into the system. The image and data of the check will then be digitally sent through the online banking institution for validation and clearing.

Like any online service that involves financial exchanges, there is always a small risk that someone could potentially infiltrate the system and steal one’s identity, but since checks need to be endorsed, there is that added security when scanning checks into a secure online system. The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) has established guidelines to match the software as a service check scanning service. The software also sets deposit limits and logs each transaction, which creates reports that banking managers and users can research or audit.
Consumers and banks save time, transportation costs and even labor costs with new check scanning software as a service. You may consider getting check scanning software next time you are waiting in a line a block long at your bank only to cash a small check that costs less than all the time you spent to get it cashed.

I’ve added FAQ section. It’s not big yet (only 8 questions covered), and the answers are typically terse, but a start is a start.

Presentations section has a couple new talks. One small step for the page but giant leap for me is that all the previously posted talks were given by ourselves. And now we’re not alone – hooray and cheers for Ralf and Mike!

Last but not least, Powered By section, now at 113 sites and counting, was updated and restyled. I had long wondered how much Sphinx search queries are performed per month if we sum all the sites using it, and whether we already hit 1B page views per month or not. Being open-source, there’s no easy way to tell. But now with the addition of craigslist to Powered By list I finally know that we do. Many thanks to Jeremy Zawodny who worked hard on making that happen, my itch is no more.

Billions of documents indexed, billions of queries per month. Mind-blowing…

View full post on Sphinx search engine news

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is receiving a lot of attention in analysts’ briefings and technology trade press articles. In the past year, SaaS has emerged from its pioneering group of start-ups and medium-sized vendors to be embraced, albeit awkwardly, by software giants including Oracle and SAP. Much of the attention SaaS has garnered in recent months has focused on the new business model that on-demand software enables. However, some veteran technologists who’ve adopted SaaS for their own livelihood, and analysts as well, say that the phenomenon might well be the catalyst for a far wider-ranging discussion on software development for the next generation. The highly interactive Web 2.0 model and iterative development have dovetailed to force even the most traditional programmers to at least consider the end of lengthy development cycles. Software as a Service develpment companies are now perfectly positioned to provide all business software applications delivered via the clooud – no software to download, no risk of piracy, and no risk of hard drive failures.

Technology and culture driving business One major technological factor in advancing the new development models might be the rise of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web services standards. The ASP model, championed in the late 1990s and early years of this decade, never took off because its one-to-one architecture was inherently difficult to scale. SaaS technology, however, takes advantage of a one-to-many SOA-enabled architecture that can offer customized services to different customers, and even different branches of the same enterprise. One example is a customer relationship management application offered on a SaaS basis by LiveCRM LiveCRM enables companies to drive sales productivity, increase visibility, and expand revenues with an affordable, easy-to-deploy service that delivers success to companies of all sizes. The beauty of a product like LiveCRM lies in its ability to adapt to different business practices and provide a unique customised solution to each without rebuilding the interface each time – This is where SaaS becomes so powerful. Deploying a SaaS application means a major culture change within the organisation. The change comes not just in how things are seen and reported on through aq software product, but also how the product itself is used. Many large organisations (predominantly the older ones) have spent a significant amount on training personnel and getting them used to the current systems and software products used. In my experience, many of these personnel are not as skilled as some of the younger counterparts which presents a very steep learning curve for businesses. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. SaaS can be deployed in bite sizes; module by module and as people get more used to it, a full scale deployment can be considered. Also, a carefully managed implementation including change management, workshops and solution recipes are also a great way to minimise this learning curve. So a change in technology, in this case, also demands a change in culture. But a change in culture is already happening The technological advancements underpinning the new methodologies are being complemented by a new “ground up” ethos that will force academic program leaders and enterprise strategists to retool their own thinking. In fact, the shift is a generational shift. Just as the young technologists of the late 1980s created both ad hoc and formal transitions of enterprise data from mainframes to PCs and client-server architectures, the next-gen architectures of on-demand software are being pioneered by those who have grown up working with instantly available Web-based applications. From an executive perspective, SaaS is less about how software is going on-demand, and more about how the generation of users who have grown up with the Web as a technology are coming into the workforce. And this crowd expects the tools that allow things they’re used to—collaboration, immediate ubiquitous access, and so on—SaaS will make sure they get what they want. Web 2.0 and socially-oriented computing, as most people think of it, is about Facebook and mashups and things like that. While that’s a big component of the overall discussion, what I try to do is take those concepts and say, ‘How do I take those ideas, which are incubated in the Internet kiddies’ domain, and put that in real business terms—enterprise quality of service, or levels of security, compliance, audit, control and so forth—that are enterprise-worthy or government-worthy, and still keep all the beauty and openness and free-flowing nature of the Web 2.0 world? Uneasy transition Gartner’s Norton says the transition to SaaS-based architectures is still in its early phase. “By 2010, 15 percent of large companies will start projects replacing their ERP backbone with a SaaS offering,” he says. “A little later, Tier 1 consultancies will offer SaaS services, and 30 to 40 percent of vendors offering SaaS service by 2012.” Norton estimates about half of the Web 2.0 projects visible to end users are still developed using noniterative development methods, but he sees that changing. However, Norton says he has seen the promise of some flexible projects run aground just as they might become more useful in a cross-enterprise manner, because corporate executives lose their nerve and fall back on old development methods as projects get larger. “They don’t know what they’ve got, and it’s easier to say, ‘If we put the standard controls in place, we can control this beast.’ They only have the illusion of control.” In all but the most daring organizations, it will take time to realize that the illusion of control might best be modified in favor of a collaborative, nonhierarchical approach. Vandervoort says the next generation of developers is coming out of universities well-informed of these technologies, but are receiving little to no formal training in how to use them in enterprise settings. “The shift that has to occur, both in academic training and in enterprise thinking, is to move away from the idea that IT builds the answer for the user,” he says. He sees Web 2.0 enabling IT to shift its thinking toward enabling users to build their own solutions. In doing that, he says users will find their own answer via the path of least resistance, or POLR. What do you think?

But what has been happening on the tech side during the last months?
Actually a whole lot. 0.9.9-rc2 will introduce over 20 new features again,
including several really major ones. It is nearing a code freeze and being
documented right now. A public release is due shortly. Also work on
realtime updates (for version 1.x) is now underway, sponsored by
BoardReader
for March and April. The effort is pretty huge and we’re going to need
additional funding for RT Updates starting May, so if your company’s
interested in making them happen at all and getting priority support
for the feature at the earliest stage, as well as other perks,
drop me a note.

View full post on Sphinx search engine news

Software as a service is closely related to Application Service Provider (ASP), which provides computer based services to companies over a network. Software as a Service specifically refers to software offered as a service. A more traditional model of software distribution, where a company purchases software, installs it and maintains it themselves is known as software as a product. Companies have many options when it comes to handling their software. However, software as a service has numerous benefits that should be explored.

The IT Staff is Already Busy
Employing a new technology across an entire company is very complex and very time consuming. If a company utilizes SaaS, it is much easier to roll out a new technology to a small test department, minimizing risk if it fails. However, most importantly, it won’t utilize an already overworked IT staff.

Motivation
What happens if the software or technology breaks? Your IT department, already overworked, will get to it when and if they can, depending on the needs of others in the organization and how important your issue is. In the SaaS delivery model, the vendor is very interested in keeping your business. This means that when something breaks it will get fixed right away.

Faster Installation
Since everything is running securely at the vendor’s location, companies will not need to rely on their IT departments to install an application. Not only that, but all users in the corporation will be able to have the same version of the software at the same time. You won’t need to roll it out over a period of many months.

Cost Savings
Customers pay for the software monthly in this model. This means that a company won’t need to come up with a large sum of money at one time when they want to update or add new technology and/or software for their employees. The monetary risk is much lower and companies will be more willing to take a risk when they aren’t seeing such a large sum of money leaving the company at one time.

Security
Data security can be safer when it is hosted. Frankly, it has to be secure or vendors will lose business. Security is a number one priority and data is backed up constantly. Again, with a busy IT department, it may be easy to overlook backing up or securing information.

Software as a Service is becoming a worldwide method employed by companies to service their technology needs. In a world where software is updated yearly, adding important and often business essential updates, it is no wonder companies are looking for ways to save money. Software as a Service has become a solution for companies to save money, have faster installation times, relieve an already busy IT department and ensure things are happening in a secure and timely manner. Is it for you? More and more companies will begin asking themselves that question as they look to the future of technology within their organizations.