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Feature Matrix
We keep an up to date and detailed Kernel Feature list here.
| Feature | Description | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Installation and environment | |||
| Linux flavours | All of course, but tested on CentOS, RedHat, Ubuntu and Debian. Works well on local Windows installations (not recommended for heavy production sites) | ||
| Application Servers Supported | Tomcat 6.0+, JBoss 4.2.0+ | ||
| Apache front-end proxying supported with mod_cache and mod_jk | Yes | ||
| Runs on same server as client application | No need for separate server(s). SESAT is deployed directly on the Java Application Server | ||
| Supports Java 1.6 | Yes | ||
| Multiple Sites in the same JVM | Yes, with properties and templates inheritance for (sub)sites (e.g. vg.sesam.no can inherit properties and settings from sesam.no) | ||
| Easy configuration of each defined site/application | Yes, currently by XML-files, but with GUI-administration module under development. | ||
| Scalability | Scales linearly with number of servers using HW load balancing with sticky sessions. | ||
| Automated Deployment | Deployment scripts included for deployment of both SESAT and client applications. | ||
| Source Code | |||
| Full access to Source Code | yes, from Subversion | ||
| Permissions to apply own patches | Yes | ||
| Special functionality built upon request | Yes, contribute it yourself or persuade the developers. | ||
| Site GUI Development | |||
| Search Portal Framework | Yes. SESAT is both federating search middleware and a search application framework. | ||
| Development Environment | Anything you want. We recommend both NetBeans and Eclipse. | ||
| Development OS | Linux, Mac OS X and Windows | ||
| Client application building | Maven2-based generation of .war deployment files | ||
| Content formats supported | HTML, XHTML, XML, VCF, VML, RSS, etc. | ||
| Site inheritance | SESAT allows for sites to inherit layout and configuration from parent sites. | ||
| Example templates included | Yes, extensive stack of templates based on several real-life sites. (Velocity or JSP) | ||
| Easy development environment setup | Yes. Supports ssh-tunnels to data sources. | ||
| Search result access method | The Search Result Object is directly available from the template system. | ||
| Normalised search result | The Search Result Object presents the result in a normalised and uniform way, independent of the underlying index technology. | ||
| Templating System | Velocity and JavaServerPages are standard, support for adding any other Java-based templating systems. | ||
| Ajax-support | Search Result Object is connected to user sessionID to provide asynchronous information access. | ||
| Support for Java Faces | Not as standard yet, but can easily be implemented by client. Near-future versions of SESAT will have working examples of Java Faces. | ||
| Full flexibility for templating framework | Yes. | ||
| Query Analysis | |||
| Configurable business logic | Yes, through the rules engine and administrative tools. | ||
| Rules-engine based Query Analysis | Yes, with rules managed by own module in SESAT ADM | ||
| Automatic search-phrase highlighting | Yes, for FAST-indexes. Highlightning independent of index type will be released in the near future. | ||
| Specification and administration of trigger-words | Yes, triggers may change ranking order of individual indexes in the search result. For example, "fact oslo" may boost content from a Wikipedia index before content from a global crawled web index. | ||
| Administrative back-end for rules engine | Yes, SESAT ADM Text Analysis providing automatic detection of full-names, geographical names etc. | ||
| Search term categorisation based on lookup-lists | yes | ||
| Phrase-search support | yes | ||
| Standard Search Operator support | yes, all functionality is inherited from the underlying index motor | ||
| Easter-eggs support | yes, of course! | ||
| In-built calculator | Yes, queries can be mathematically evaluated | ||
| Result Handling | |||
| Result Object | Comprehensive, easily accessible object model | ||
| Simple Flat Result List | Search result represented as java object | ||
| Result persistence | Yes, attached to user SessionID, configurable duration | ||
| Handle both generic and specific index results | Yes - user configurable and extendable | ||
| Enrichments Support | |||
| Enrichments ranking based on rules | yes | ||
| Easy creation and definition of enrichments | Yes, you can use any search command as an enrichment that will be displayed and ranked according to initial search analysis. | ||
| Unlimited number of enrichments | Yes | ||
| Ad Systems Support | |||
| Yahoo PPC | yes | ||
| AdMomentum | yes | ||
| Google AdWords | yes | ||
| Easy to add new Ad Systems | Easy for user to implement Ad Systems by creating new, simple search commands | ||
| Data Stores Support | |||
| Default Data Index Support | Default Search Command implementations for Fast-4 Simple search, Fast-4 Advanced search, Fast-5 ESP search, generic XML search, Web Services seach, Blending (FAST) search, Clustering (FAST) search, Correcting (FAST) search, Mathematical/Calculator search, Overture PPC search, PicSearch search, Platefood PPC search, Sensis search, Solr (Lucene) search, Stock market search, Yahoo IDP search, Yahoo Media search, and Youtube search. | ||
| Support for external data stores | Yes, through HTTP, WebServices, JDBC. Easy to add own data sources using the SPIs. | ||
| Roadmap Data Source/Index Support | Lucene, Google, SharePoint, other sources we may need to search in | ||
| Reference Search Command implementations | Blinkx Video search, Blocket search, Finn search, GeoData Map search, HittaMap search, Hitta search, HittaWeather search, Prisjakt search, Storm Weather Blinkx Video search, Tasteline search, TV-guide (FAST) search, Whitepages (FAST) search, Yellow Pages (FAST) search | ||
| Support for Custom Search Commands |  Easy to develop using inbuilt SPI |
||
| Core Application Extensibility | |||
| Available SPIs (Service Provider Interfaces) for extending core functionality | Yes | ||
| Full access to source code | Yes | ||
| Independent release-cycles of minor kernel upgrades vs. client code | Yes | ||
| Backwards-compability | Complete Upgrade Guides kept up to date. | ||
| APIs | |||
| WebServices/XML support | Any search result is available through XML interfaces. | ||
| SOA-enabled interfaces | Yes, through WebServices | ||
| Search Logging Support | |||
| Logging of requests to underlying search engines | Yes, everything can be logged with timestamp and result information (no. of hits) | ||
| Logging of client information | Yes, user environment, browser characteristics | ||
| Search context logging | Referer-domain, "skin" (client site from which the user is searching), navigational elements. | ||
| User navigation tracking | Yes, using SESAT's Boomerang component, you can track user behaviour on your site, and also any access to external sites. Also, any asynchronous access activities can be logged by Boomerang. | ||
| Administrative tool for reading logs | Yes, part of SESAT ADM | ||
| Automatic anonymisation of IP-address | Yes, configurable part of the statistics parser. | ||
| System behaviour logging | For each search, SESAT logs search execution times (on a per-index basis), zero-hitcount search results (on a per-index basis), enrichments, slow responding indexes | ||
| Monitoring/Surveillance Logging Support | |||
| Slow index/non-responding index detection | Yes, logged to own surveillance log | ||
| Personalisation | |||
| Basic personalisation support | Yes | ||
| Persistence storages supported | MySql currently supported, but other databases available from JDBC | ||
| Security | user session keys generated at each request | ||
| Sample code | Yes, working example of personalisation provided | ||
| User credentials storage | OpenLDAP | ||
| Specific Index Functionality: FAST | |||
| Full navigator support | Yes, through Result Object and template system | ||
| Full support for rank profiles | Yes, the profile can be specified in the search command. | ||
| Full support for collections | Yes | ||
| Robust Error-handling for common FAST-errors | Yes, for example query matching failures/downtime |
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