Docman fulltext search

Hi Oliver,

According to the release notes the Search Domain functionality is removed, no alternatives are mentioned:

“SEARCH DOMAINS Search domains used by IFS Enterprise Application Search are removed as Enterprise Application Search is removed”

So without being 100% sure, it implies it is not there anymore and there are no alternatives proposed by IFS.

Regards, Roel

@Mathias Dahl This discussion was one year ago. Has the situation changed now? Are there any alternatives introduced for cloud for search? If not any concrete plans for upcoming releases? 

( ‘can we search ….’ is one of the first questions I get when talking about document management to customers. So fingers crossed :) )

Hi Sachintha :)

There has been little development on this I'm afraid. We are looking into a possible solution now, but it's too early to say if that will be released, and when.

Hi,

I would like to ask if there is any progress.
As written below, in IFS cloud we are missing f​​​ull-text search across documents (metadata, contents of data files) and full-text in other IFS Cloud modules.

Is there any workaround?
Thank you
Best Regards
Nicole Valentine

Sorry, no news on this one.

Good morning Mathias / All,

My company also has a need to be able to search inside files held in IFS DocMan. I was disappointed to learn that EE’s Application Search is yet another feature which didn't make the transition into Aurena :-(

I was wondering if anyone has attempted to develop a CRIM solution to this one? Would it be possible to deploy a quick report which takes the search string as user input, and then calls a custom API, which in-turn searches the File_Data field in the EDM_FILE_STORAGE LU? Does anyone know if that is that technically possible (@Mathias_Dahl)?

• Robin

@RobinHunter

Since you are still on Apps 10 you should be able to leverage the Oracle Text indexes that are used under the hood in EAS. The key thing is using the "contains" SQL syntax, against the right column. The table that keeps the column to search on, for all three search domains in Docman, is DOC_TITLE_TAB.

Here is an example search against the column used for document content search, for the word "engine":

SELECT doc_no FROM doc_issue_tab WHERE CONTAINS(text_content_id$, 'engine') > 0;

Using the view works too, and is needed if you want to run this as an end-user:

SELECT doc_no FROM ifsapp.doc_issue WHERE CONTAINS(text_content_id$, 'engine') > 0;

In the QR you want to have the user input the search pattern:

SELECT doc_no FROM ifsapp.doc_issue WHERE CONTAINS(TEXT_CONTENT_ID$, '&searchpattern') > 0

I tried this and it works! 🙂 💪🏻 See screenshots below.

These are the other columns used by the two other search domains:

•  TEXT_ATTR_ID$
•  TEXT_OBJCON_ID$

You should read up on all the different ways in which the CONTAINS operator supports:

https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/oracle-database/19/ccref/oracle-text-CONTAINS-query-operators.html#GUID-1F2C4D0C-1DE4-48E4-8A59-DDF21290EC50

Defining the report:

Run it:

Results:

By using LISTAGG we can convert that to one row, and to a value that you can paste into a query on the Doc No field:

select listagg (doc_no, ';') within group (order by doc_no) from doc_issue where contains(TEXT_CONTENT_ID$, '&searchpattern') > 0

Quick report result:

Using the value in a search:

Try it out!

Thanks for the great reply Mathias, That’s exactly what we needed!

It run really fast too. We have ~25k doc revisions in our database at the moment, and the search results are displayed almost instantly. I guess that’s the power of the Oracle Text indexes.

I hope IFS can find a way to add this functionality into IFS Cloud, as I feel the ability to search inside docs is a very powerful/desirable feature of any Document Management system.

Thanks again for your help here.

Kind Regards,

• Robin

@RobinHunter 

Yes, it works quite well 🙂

Whatever we add back (it's on the backlog/wish list), it will probably not use Oracle Text, since that requires the documents to be stored in the database, and we don't think the database is the place to store the documents going forward.

@Mathias Dahl Hi,

Our Text Contents are a bit weird. :) What is the problem?

hhy38 wrote:

@Mathias Dahl Hi,

 

Our Text Contents are a bit weird. :) What is the problem?

 

Why do you think it's weird?

@Mathias Dahl 

All text contents are meaningless. Am I wrong? 

It's not the text contents you are seeing, it's just a unique ID for that particular content or record. The document file content is stored in the EdmFileStorage entity.

@Mathias Dahl Thank you. Is there a configuration to activate it? We have records in edm_file. We don’t have any record in edm_file_storage.

Without any data in EdmFileStorage, meaning you are not storing any documents in the database, you will not be able to use document content search.

@Mathias Dahl Yes, you are right. We are storing files in the FTP. The database has just a path for them.

@hhy38 

Thanks for verifying. You of course have the option to use a mix of document files stored in the database and on FTP.