Creating a search database

A search database is necessary to perform a full text search on a help set. When creating a help set , such database is not created by default. To create a search database

A search database will be created with the next save operation of respective help set.

Note: Even with option 'create search DB on save' set, a search database is created only once per session during the first save operation. This is because the Indexer class from Sun MIcrosystems which is to be used for search database creation causes an exception when executed more than once per session. See report for bug ID 4456380 at http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugParade/bugs/4456380.html for details.

Why is a search database not created by default?

There might be other reasons for or against creation of a search database with every save operation, but these are the main reasons for the existing solution:

  1. When working on a documentation project data typically is saved quite often. If a search database would be created with every save operation, each save operation would take unnecessarily long.
  2. Usually only the final version of a documentation project needs full text search capabilities, so during creation of the help set it would not be worthwile to create a search databse all the time.
  3. A search database consumes additional space. It might make sense to not create a search database and distribute the help set without one. An application using the help set could notice the missing search database and create one upon first use of the help set on the client side.