On 19/10/2012 14:18, John Ramsey wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> We would like to canvas opinion on urging SSL to address the problem we have with the inability of Index+ to deal with fuzzy searches.  Our problem is that many of our customers are police officers who have little or no knowledge of chemistry but need to find information on new and emerging drugs of abuse.  Also many pharmaceuticals have names that sound alike but are spelled differently (homophones).
>
> “Last week someone sent us a list of drugs that included Ethylphenediate. I copied and pasted this into TICTAC with a no matches found result. Suspecting that it should end in “ate” rather than “iate”, I tried this: “*Ethylphened*” and still no matches. The problem, as it turns out, is that the correct spelling is Ethylphenidate.”
>
> If you try this in Google it returns:-
> Showing results for Ethylphenidate instead of Ethylphenediate.
>
> Am I being unrealistic in expecting Index + to be as good as Google in this respect?

Given that this comparison between Google and Index+ came up during some 
office banter only yesterday I couldn't resist the urge to point people 
at the following images which go some way to explaining why Index+ can't 
always be as good as Google ...

	http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/

Light hearted response aside, I'd personally welcome the use of the user 
group to canvas this kind of opinion on where SSL should be directing 
its development effort.

... Alec Turner