[Yanel-dev] Next-gen search interface for Yarep

[Cedric Staub]

Hello out there

We are currently thinking about extending the search-capabilities of
Yarep by adding some new attributes that could be implemented by a
repository implementation to allow access to various search interfaces.

For example, I have drafted two possible interfaces:
  - QOMSearchableV1: This interface would allow a repository to expose 
    the Query Object Model API as defined in JCR 2.0.
  - LuceneSearchableV1: This interface would allow a repository to
    expose the Lucene search interface, as defined in the Lucene API.

A repository could choose to implement none, one, or both of them.

One could also think of other possible search interfaces. Another
possibility would be to come up with a new Yarep-specific search 
interface and implement that using e.g. Lucene as a backend, but I feel
like we would be reinventing the wheel (also, it's a lot of work).

There are some possible issues with the interfaces tough:
  - Most repositories use Lucene as a backend for indexing, but where
    are we going to find a QOM implementation that can interface with
    Lucene and that could be integrated in Yarep? Jackrabbit has JQOM,
    but I think we'd have to pull in all of Jackrabbit to make use of it.
  - If we expose the Lucene search interface, we might risk tying
    ourselves to Lucene too much. On the other hand, since we already
    use Lucene the implementation of this would be very
    straight-forward.

I would like to know what other people think of this approach or if they
can see a better solution ;-).

Cheers
Cedric