[Zope-dev] Search Interface, maybe a Replace Interface

[Chris Withers]

I've read the Search and Replace thread on zope@zope.org with interest
and it's stirred up a few things that interest me.

1. Is there a 'Search Interface' in Zope? I know we have the Catalog,
which provides _a_ search interface, but it has some problems...
Wouldn't it be great if there was a neutral Zope Search Interface which
specified how you would index, un-index, re-index objects and how you
would search the resulting indexes? That way, you could use ZCatalog,
should you wish, but likewise someone could implement that interface
usign MySQL's new full text searching stuff, or perhaps the Verity
search engine, or whatever else anyone wants to implement. I guess PJE
might fire in with the suggestion of a LoginManager-like implementation
so people could search and index things in a mroe flexible way, which
would also be a great idea...

2. I agree completely with Jon Farr about the replaceable side of
things. Any object which supports 'content replacement', which is what
we're talking about here, should implement the replaceable interface.
Dunno what this would look like though, I guess the Replaceable
interface would need to extend the Catalog interface...

...hmmm, that raises an interesting other point, one which has been
mentioned before, that of nested catalogs. Okay, I'm not going to
explain this very well, and I'm sure it has huge problems, but...

...what if all content objects implemented a SearchAndReplace interface,
and in addition propogated SearchAndReplace requested to any objects
they contain?

Hmmm...

Quite enough waffling from me, what do people think?

cheers,

Chris