 |
|
 |
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.
Suggested Uses
Getting Started
Using Red-Piranha
Spread The Word
Make It Better
SUGGESTED
USES
- 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.
Red-Piranha allows you to search information with a minimum of effort.
With a little effort , it can search *anything* , including Oracle
Databases , XML Webservices (including Java/J2EE and .Net webservices)
, RSS and even Web based XML feeds such as Google and Amazon.
GETTING
STARTED
First of all download Red-Piranha from here. If you're not sure which
one you want, download the ready-to-deploy (bin) file. The other files
contain either the ready-to-deploy plus full source (bin_src_lib) or
the source only (src).
If you have not already installed Java and Tomcat , you can get them
from the Sun Java and Apache Tomcat websites. Red-Piranha should work
with Java 1.3 and Tomcat 3 , although we recommend Java 1.4 or higher
and Tomcat 4/5.
Unzip the file you have downloaded - there should be a file called
RP.war. Copy this file into the the 'webapps' folder of your tomcat.
Within a number of seconds you should see a new folder called 'RP'
created.
Congratulations - your copy of Red-Piranha has now deployed and is
ready to use.
USING
RED-PIRANHA
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_HOME\Webapps\RP\logs\rp.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.
SPREAD
THE WORD
If you're using Red-Piranha , the let us know. Even better, tell your
friends. Email everybody you know. Put it on your website (feel free to
link to http://red-piranha.sourceforge.net/).
Include it in your latest blogs. Anything that you do to spread the
word will help us (a lot). Thanks.
Either way (good or bad) , drop us a line on the users
mailing list.
MAKE
IT BETTER
Already , you can do a lot with Red-Piranha. We would like your help to
make it do a lot more. You can help a little , or you can help a lot -
it's your choice. Some things that we would find very useful:
- Bug reports and fixes
- Documentation (your
experience of using Red-Piranha)
- Integrations (how you
linked Red-Piranha to your systems)
- Extensions (how you
got Red-Piranha to do new things)
- Improved Learning
Abilities (how you made Red-Piranha smarter)
- Performance and
Security (how you made Red-Piranha faster , and more secure)
For more information , send an email to either the project admins or
the developer
mailing list.
If you're interested in playing with the technologies , here is a list
of what Red-Piranha uses under the covers. Thanks to everybody involved
in these projects , as we wouldn't have been able to get this far
without you.
- Spring - a J2EE lite
framework that gives us a lot of functionality
- Tomcat - the Java Web
Server we can run in.
- Lucene - the Apache
project to give a searching and indexing engine.
- RDF / XML - Jena , to
store all our information in RDF (aka the Semantic Web)
- Xerces - for XML
manipulation
- PDF box - for reading
of PDF documents.
For more information on the structure of Red-Piranha , what it does ,
and how it does it , a useful point to start is the Specification
/ Architecture Document.
|
