Verity OUT! SES IN!

Posted on June 4, 2008 by David Roe

Oracle announced on metalink today that they will be releasing a new search component for UCM this month.  The component is called OracleTextSearch and once it is release Oracle will no longer distribute Verity for the content server.  I should stress that the announcement specifically calls out that they are only ending distribution, not support.  So if you have Verity now, rest easy, this is just for new purchases.

I am not really surprised by this move, it’s been rumored for some time that Oracle would stop shipping Verity with the content server.  Stellent after all was not competing in the search space so Verity with it’s strong market penetration and excellent performance(it is very, very fast) made perfect sense for them use as their default search engine.  Oracle of course is competing in the search market both with database search, which more or less goes up against VDK directly, as well as Secure Enterprise Search which competes with Autonomy’s other search engine(is it IDOL now?).

I have to admit that I like Verity(when I’m not rebuilding a search index) so this is a little bit of a bummer, but I’m  excited to see what’s in store next.  Oracle laid out a roadmap for how search with the content server will go.

Their plan is to first stop distributing Verity once OracleTextSearch is released, which should be this month. OracleTextSearch is a database-based search component, and according to the release it will not require a database switch.  I am sure they would prefer everyone to be using Oracle databases, but to their credit they do appear to be sticking with the “support other databases” plan.

If you do happen to have an Oracle database available and it happens to be an 11g one, you will apparently be in for a special treat as OracleTextSearch can leverage 11g’s Oracle Text features.  According the the announcement there appear to be some significant performance improvements over Verity by using Oracle Text.

The big news for me though is that when the new version of Oracle Secure Enterprise Search(11g) is released, Oracle will be distributing a limited use version specifically for the content server.  SES has quite a few features which Verity either does not have or for some reason have not been exposed.  I think there’s a fair chance we may see search features like these in the content server:

  • “Did you mean” where the search engine looks for close matches of you search term if it does not return results.
  • Stemming which searches for different variants of a word.  Basically looking for car if you search for cars
  • Synonyms which are predefined words that of course mean something else.  For instance you could define blog to mean the same as Content On Content Management and all search for blog would return references to this blog(wow that is a long name).
I am not up to fully up to speed on the features in SES, but a few months ago one of the product managers took us through a great demo of the 10g version.  I recall being pretty impressed by it’s features as well as the concept of an enterprise search that can reach in to all systems.  I’m guessing that the UCM limited license version will probably not be leveraging the enterprise connectors to index your ERP data, rather it will probably just be a localized version for the content server.  Still though it would be pretty cool to have some more modern search function integrated in to the content server.
Here’s the link to the annoucnement, of course you’ll need a metalink account to read it:
I’m off to stash a copy of VDK6 away.

 

About David Roe

Thanks for visiting ContentOnContentManagment.com, my name is David Roe and this is my blog. I work for Ironworks Consulting as a technical lead/architect in our enterprise content management group. My primary focus is implementing Oracle Universal Content Server, which was formerly known as Stellent Content Server. Prior to focusing in Stellent, my work centered around .NET integrations with other content managment systems as well as content management systems built on the .NET framework. I plan on keeping this blog mostly technical in nature. I’m not really one for the Coke vs. Pepsi debates, so plan on seeing quite a bit of ”how to” content. Please feel free to download and use any of the code examples available on the site. As you might imagine none of it is supported or warented..do we need a disclaimer? I do ask that you leave any references to me or this site in the comments though.
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2 Responses to Verity OUT! SES IN!

  1. Pingback: Database Management » Blog Archive » Verity OUT! SES IN!

  2. John Sim says:
    June 5, 2008 at 4:13 am

    Thats good & bad news..

    I`m glad they aren`t forcing the community onto Oracle DB.. Well not just yet, I have a lot of catching up to do on Oracle.

    I`m still going to stick with Verity/Autonomy for the next year or so and I`ll keep an eye on OracleTextSearch it all sounds good though.

    But because of stellents track record of bugs on first release.. I`ll be sitting it out until I hear everything is safe.