[Info-vax] Looking for some text search ideas

[Simon Clubley]

On 2014-09-27, Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> wrote:
> On 2014-09-27, David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>
>> The policy is, you get a group of product records from the 
>> manufacturers, and you just plug it in.  There is a rather good reason 
>> for this.  Some third party, don't know who, has parts explosion 
>> pictures for most of this stuff, and everybody needs to be using the 
>> same part numbers, otherwise when someone selects a part from the GUI 
>> software, there won't be a match on the distributor's system.  So 
>> whatever the manufacturer's set up is used.
>
> So we have established that the date here doesn't come from Random J
> Office-Clerk.  Excellent.  :-)
>

Actually, it's potentially rather bad (depending on the maximum size of
the field for the description).

If David's working from a manufacturer's master price/parts file, then
how does he know the manufacturer hasn't truncated/collapsed the
description to fit in a fixed length field in some database ?

Unless you can guarantee the full keywords are in the description, the
only reliable way to solve this specific problem is to work with the
manufacturer's part numbers and use the parts explosion pictures to
identify the specific part number if you don't already know it.

Even if you get a list of head gaskets from a database, then how do
you know _for_ _sure_ which one is the correct one to use unless there's
additional attributes in the database specifying the specific range
of products this head gasket will fit.

Yes, this is day job territory for me, and yes, no one has ever asked
me for a lookup by part description and yes, these are the questions
I would ask if they ever did.

>> Part supersuccession (happens very often) would also suffer.
>
> Tell me about 'em.  Supercessions where multiple parts become whole
> assemblies or vice versa can be a pain to handle.  Things get interesting
> when a manufacturer re-uses a superseded part number and you or your
> retailers still have the original part number in stock.
>

It's probably wiser not to get me started on the subject of part
number supersessions...

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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