Searches are executed against Verity index collections that you first generate. This section describes how to define, generate, and administer Verity collections.
Cold Fusion Verity indexes, known as collections, are created in one of two ways, depending on whether you are indexing ASCII text data or an ODBC data source.
Before defining and generating a collection, you need to plan the location of your collection, as well as the information you want to index. The Cold Fusion Verity Fuel Pack includes the tools you need to define and generate Verity collections. You can also incorporate your own valid Verity collection construction and search tools.
You can generate collections to index any ASCII text file or a dataset from any supported database table. The index or collection you build contains indexing data optimized for searching. Collection information includes:
- Word indexes
- An internal documents table
- Logical pointers to actual document files
In your Cold Fusion application, you can generate and search multiple collections, each of which can be designed to focus on a specific group of documents or database tables, according to subject, document type, location, or any other logical grouping. Searches can be performed against multiple collections, giving you lots of flexibity in designing your search interface.
Indexing ASCII text data involves simply pointing the CFX_INDEX tag at the source you want to index: a file or directory. To index ASCII data, you:
- Define a logical name and location for your collection using the Cold Fusion Verity Administrator.
- Generate the collection using either the Cold Fusion Verity Administrator or the CFX_INDEX tag.
Note: You can only generate indexes of ASCII text files using the Cold Fusion Verity Administrator. To index an ODBC data source, you must use the CFX_INDEX tag.
Creating a collection from an ODBC data source involves an extra step not required when indexing ASCII text data. You generate a collection from an ODBC data source by pointing the CFX_INDEX tag at the result set from CFQUERY output. To index an ODBC data source, you:
- Define a logical name and location for your collection using the Cold Fusion Verity Administrator.
- Execute a CFQUERY to retrieve data from the desired ODBC data source.
- Generate the collection using the CFX_INDEX tag.