Red-Piranha 0.3 review

Red-Piranha is an open source search system that can actually 'learn' what you are looking for

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Paul Browne

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Red-Piranha is an open source search system that can actually 'learn' what you are looking for. It lets you go everywhere , find anything , understand everything.

Because it is open source , it can integrate with any system. Because you can use it as a web page , command line or XML- WebService , it will work with most languages , including Java , Perl , C#/.Net and PHP. As a Java based program , it will run on any platform including Windows , Linux / Unix and Mac.

Here are some key features of "Red Piranha":
Personal Search Engine for your Desktop (Windows , Linux and Mac).
Intranet Search Engine - Search your Company or College Intranet.
Part of your Development Project - Have search abilities up and running in a few minutes.
To provide Search facilities on your website.
As a P2P search engine.
In conjunction with a wiki, as a knowledge / document management solution.
Scan a set of websites for the data you want (e.g. Search Job sites on a hourly basis).
Explore the Semantic web using RDF.
Search RSS feeds for the information you want.
Search your Companies systems (including SAP , Oracle or any other Database / Data source).
Provide a back end for searching in your App (Web , Swing , SWT , Flash, Mozilla-XUL, PHP , Perl or even c#/.Net) .
Document Management for PDF, Word and other Docs.
As a Webservice to provide search information
As a command line tool , to give searching power to your scripts.
Provide a Search facility for your project documentation.


Using

To use Red-Piranha - open your favourite web browser and point it at http://localhost:8080/RP . Within a few seconds , you should see the Red-Piranha start screen. This will have three items of interest

A Text box , where we enter the information to add or search
An 'add information' button - to tell Red-Piranha about new information
A 'Search' button - to carry out a search.

Before we can search , we must tell Red-Piranha we information we are interested in. This is as easy as putting the piece of information we want to add (e.g. the folder c:temp) in the search box and pressing the 'Add information' button. A message will be displayed saying that your information is being added and will be available to search shortly. For more information , look in the logs at TOMCAT_HOMEWebappsRPlogsrp.log

Examples of things we can add to Red-Piranha are

A folder (e.g. C:Temp). All files in both this folder and *all* it's subfolders will be added.
An individual file. This file can be text , a web page , a word document , or pdf document. For binary files (like word , which are not plain text) , Red-Piranha will scan the file for recognizable text and add that.
A Web page. Red-Piranha will add this web page , *and* web pages it links to.
A Google Search (e.g. http://www.google.com/search?q=some+thing&num=100). Red-Piranha will get the results of the google search , and add information on the pages it links to.
An XML file (including RSS feeds) , either on disk or over the web.
Favourites / Bookmarks folders - Red-Piranha will index the web pages that these favourites point to.

Adding information can take anything from a few milliseconds , depending on the amount of information being added. Once added, Red-Piranha will check on a regular basis to see if the information added has changed and re-index if required. Your information is now available to be searched.

To do a search , put the item you want to search for into the textbox and press 'search'. Red-Piranha will show the search results on the screen. Clicking on the link beside the search results will show you the original information (as long as you have access to it).

From version 0.3 onwards , Red-Piranha can 'learn' what search results you are interested in an improve your future searches. To give Red-Piranha feedback and help it 'learn' what you are interested in , click on any of the links on the 'search results' page. Red-Piranha makes a note of your choice , which is used to adjust the search results later.