Verity OUT! SES IN!

David Roe — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:30:56 +0000

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:

Oracle UCM Verity Announcement

I’m off to stash a copy of VDK6 away.

OpenWorld – Wednesday

David Roe — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 03:57:47 +0000

Wednesday at OpenWorld was the slowest for me in terms of sessions. There was one UCM session related to building an image repository later in the afternoon, but some scheduling kept me from attending. Instead, in the morning, I had the opportunity to attend “Foundations of Social Networking with Oracle WebCenter”, which was a very exciting demo of Oracle’s new portal application / framework.

The session demoed WebCenter 11g, so many of the features demonstrated aren’t actual out yet. That said, they seem to have a very good idea of what organizations are looking for beyond just a standard intranet / extranet. The session focused on how to leverage the WebCenter “Spaces” module(11g only) to create personal and community mini-sites to facilitate collaboration and ofster social networks. The usual Web / Enterprise 2.0 suspects were shown; blogs, wikis, message boards, messaging and personal profile pages all made an appearance. I am very excited about WebCenter, but haven’t worked with it yet, so it’s tough for me to have a solid opinion on it. It’s full of features and also shows a great deal of flexibility in integrating with different systems and technologies(we hear the Content Server JSR-170 connector is due out soon). I’m going to set up a test instance in the next few days and start playing with it some, so check back for updates.

Later in the day, we were down at Oracle’s meet and greet demo area where some of the Enterprise Search folks took some time to walk me through their product. It’s officially called Secure Enterprise Search(SES) and it’s standalone application which is designed to live in its own environment, providing search functionality across the organization internally and potentially externally too. They call it secure because the results can be tailored to the user, based on their rights or the resource they are attempting to access. Applications “publish” content to SES via a connector, either one from Oracle or one based on an Oracle sample framework project.

I believe Content Server’s connector for SES is out now or at least coming out very soon. Yesterday’s post highlighted the RSS Crawler component which is a critical piece of the Content Server/SES integration. The one other thing I noted about SES, was that the price pointed seemed to be pretty reasonable when compared to some of the other competitors in the space. My experience with licensing is pretty limited to a couple of the major vendors so I’m definitely not the expert in that area(among othersJ). Based on my informal chat though, Oracle does seem to have a competitive price associated with SES.

Later in the evening Oracle threw just an amazing party / concert. I haven’t really gotten in to the social aspects of the trip, but I have to mention what a great time I had last night. Had a chance to catch both “The Smithereens” and Lenny Kravitz. Billy Joel was on another stage in addition to several other popular bands. Just a very good time and nice way to close out the conference.

OpenWorld officially closes out Thursday afternoon but instead of visiting sessions today, I’ve been on a plane all day heading back to Virginia, making this my last post from OpenWorld.

Content on Content Management » Search

Verity OUT! SES IN!

OpenWorld – Wednesday