[daisy] [JIRA] Commented: (DSY-621) Many query fields in dialogs should use wildcards by default

[Karel Vervaeke (JIRA)]

    [ http://issues.cocoondev.org//browse/DSY-621?page=comments#action_13565 ] 

Karel Vervaeke commented on DSY-621:
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I don't know...
Slapping wildcards around any input would 'help' would result in a guaranteed performance hit, while giving the user the option to write wildcards results in a performance hit proportional with the amount of time users search using both wildcards. Perhaps we should analyse some logfiles to see how many times users use '%word%' compared with 'word'.

Other consequences of the forced-wildcards approach:
- Users will start getting used to that and gradually start requesting auto-wildcard-search on other fields as well, further decreasing performance.
- Users will not be able to search for documents with names beginning with 'word'  (unless we add a checkbox 'do not automatically add wildcards).

Sidenote: IIRC, the performance hit of a suffixed '%' is minimal, while the performance hit of a prefix '%' is usually quite more substantial.

I'm in favor of a good analysis of this issue, because a search window unification is scheduled (currently, search is implemented in various places, each time differently: workflow, document editor, navigation editor, translation management, ...)

> Many query fields in dialogs should use wildcards by default
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
>          Key: DSY-621
>          URL: http://issues.cocoondev.org//browse/DSY-621
>      Project: Daisy
>         Type: Improvement
>   Components: Frontend (wiki)
>     Versions: 2.1
>     Reporter: Allan Pratt

>
> Most interactive queries done by users should automatically act like there are wildcard characters around the user input.
> For example, I used "Create link by searching" in the editor. I filled in the "Document name like" field with the word "suggestions." As a user, I expected this to match any document name with the word "suggestions" in it. Of course it did not - I had to write "%suggestions%" to get that effect.
> I'm not a database wonk. I know the word "like" has special meaning in database-speak, but I'm not an SQL query author, I'm a user and I want the UI to treat me like one.
> At a minimum, this could be resolved with a change to the helpful text in the query dialog (and elsewhere). Currently the text says "(leave blank to get all documents, use % as a wildcard)" but this is not quite helpful enough. If it said something like "(blank=all, %text% for substring matches)" I would have known what to do.
> I realize that the current system is more powerful than one that wraps wildcards around whatever you type. But as a new user it's surprising and frustrating to do what appears to be a simple query and not hit any pages.

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