techno.blog("Dion")

A new bug fix release of Lucene has been announced.

Check out the Changes in Apache Lucene 1.4.2.

1. Fixed bug #31241: Sorting could lead to incorrect results (documents
missing, others duplicated) if the sort keys were not unique and there
were more than 100 matches. (Daniel Naber)

2. Memory leak in Sort code (bug #31240) eliminated.
(Rafal Krzewski via Christoph and Daniel)

3. FuzzyQuery now takes an additional parameter that specifies the
minimum similarity that is required for a term to match the query.
The QueryParser syntax for this is term~x, where x is a floating
point number between 0 and 1 (a bigger number means that a higher
similarity is required). Furthermore, a prefix can be specified
for FuzzyQuerys so that only those terms are considered similar that
start with this prefix. This can speed up FuzzyQuery greatly.
(Daniel Naber, Christoph Goller)

4. PhraseQuery and PhrasePrefixQuery now allow the explicit specification
of relative positions. (Christoph Goller)

5. QueryParser changes: Fix for ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsExceptions
(patch #9110); some unused method parameters removed; The ability
to specify a minimum similarity for FuzzyQuery has been added.
(Christoph Goller)

6. IndexSearcher optimization: a new ScoreDoc is no longer allocated
for every non-zero-scoring hit.  This makes 'OR' queries that
contain common terms substantially faster.  (cutting)

This says it all.

Last night, I wrote my entry without seeing anything from the press. So, I didn’t know what the spinners had said about the debate, before or after.

Today, I heard everything come out, and was really happy to hear that everyone admitted that John Kerry came across better (it is hard to say “won” or “lost” in this type of debate).

I enjoyed the article from IBM on Service Data Objects.

Things have gone a little quiet on the SDO front for awhile, so it is good to see example code.

It is interesting to look at how the API is used:

// Get the SDO DataGraph from the DMS.
DataGraph employeeGraph = mediator.get(employeeName);
…
// Get the root object
DataObject root = employeeGraph.getRootObject();
…
// get the employee under the manager
employee = theManager.getDataObject(”employees.0″);

The API looks very generic. Similar to JDBC (get/set/Int/String etc).

The data graph that you are working with plays nicely with XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sdo:datagraph xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:company="http://com.example.company.ecore"
xmlns:sdo="commonj.sdo"
xmlns:sdo_1="http://www.eclipse.org/emf/2003/SDO">
<changeSummary>
<objectChanges key="#//@eRootObject">
<value xsi:type="sdo_1:EChangeSummarySetting"
featureName="department" dataValue="Board"/>
</objectChanges>
</changeSummary>
<company:Employee name="The Big Boss"
number="1" department="The new department" title="Mr."
manager="true">
<employees name="Terence Shorter" number="2"
department="The new department" title="Mr." manager="true">
<employees name="Miles Colvis" number="3"
department="The new department" title="Mr."/>
<employees name="John Datrane" number="4"
department="The new department" title="Mr."/>
</employees>
</company:Employee>
</sdo:datagraph>

The more I see of this, the more that I see SDO and JDO/The New Persistence API working together. SDO can be used on the service boundaries, and as ways to access data across services. But I still want to have an object model, in which I persist things, and for that I want to use a transparent persistence solution.

I, along with family, participated in a DebateWatch experiment tonight.

A group of people went to a local auditorium and watched JUST the debate, with no spin before or after the debate.

We all filled out surveys both pre, and post-debate. And, then we got to discuss the debate in groups.

It was really interesting to feel part of the community in this manner.

I was really happy with the debate. I thought Kerry did very well (although he could have been a little more aggressive in areas). I had low expectations of the event in general, since this isn’t a REAL debate.

However, Kerry got to come across well, and differentiate himself, as well as show the american people that he is “Presidential”.

Bush came across as a mean bully, and kept repeating himself.

I think a lot of people are “anti-Bush”, and this debate gives hope of being more “pro-Kerry” which is important.

Great job John, and long may it continue!