Old Bailey Search Engine

Stevebye · Post by **Stevebye** » 03 Feb 2010 15:24

From previous posts:

Now have to take the Old Bailey website to task, when doing a search on Surname Bye no records are found.

Reply from the Website Team.

Dear Steve,

This has been a problem affecting a number of users searching for
short names (three letters or less). We are correcting it in the
site's annual update which is in progress at the moment. I'm not sure
exactly when this particular correction will be implemented, but it
should happen very shortly. I'll try to let you know when I know that
it's been done, but if nothing has changed by the end of this month,
do get in touch again to let me know.

Yours,
Sharon Howard

Latest update

Dear Steve,

Well, after all that, this part of the update has been delayed again. My
understanding of the problem is that it needs some quite significant
work on the database server, which the tech staff don't want to try to
do while this and various other sites are running on the server, in case
they run into any problems. They have a new spare server which can be
used for this... but they're waiting on the main university IT support
services to do something so that can be brought into operation. So it
could happen in a few days, or it could be weeks. None of which is very
satisfactory (and I still don't know why this wasn't done properly back
in 2008 when we launched the new site and moved to the current server),
but I do have a promise that it will be done as soon as it can.

I'm sorry about all this - I'll try to let you know when I have more news.

Sharon

ID:4330

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 03 Feb 2010 17:35

Or they could just change the MySQL index engine parameter to index words of 3 letters. By default it only indexes words of 4 letters and above.
See
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/ ... uning.html

Stevebye · Post by **Stevebye** » 04 Feb 2010 14:48

Somehow, Jane, I don't think they will listen to me [cry]

Stevebye · Post by **Stevebye** » 01 Apr 2011 17:45

AFTER 14 MONTHS......

I'm pleased to be able to let you know that we have finally (!) fixed three-letter searching on names on the website. I'm very sorry for the delay in resolving this problem and I do hope it will improve your experience of using the site.

Yours,
Sharon Howard

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 01 Apr 2011 18:21

Glad to hear they finally fixed it. (Where did 14 months go?)

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