[Registry-dev] Extensible search API - coming back

[Chathura C. Ekanayake]

We have to finalize the extensible search API, as it is a blocker for 
using registry for the mashup site.
We had this discussion earlier, but ended without a proper conclusion.

I like the idea proposed by Glen, which is to always return a collection 
of resources.
Then we can use below API methods (with some modification to the API 
proposed by Glen),

/**
* Queries can be stored in any path. If we want to support user specific 
queries we can store them in a path similar to 
"/users/chathura/my_top_rated_mashups".
* Then if someone (e.g. mashup site) wants to execute user specific 
queries, he can execute the queries in the currently signed in user's path.
* i.e. we are supporting user specific queries by convention, not by logic.
*/
public void defineQuery(String queryPath, String query);

public Resource[] executeQuery(String queryPath, Object[] parameters);


In this approach we should represent all possible search results as 
resources. Some possible search results are:

Normal resources
Comments
Tags
Ratings
Users

In all above types, we can put the main data part (e.g. comment text, 
tag string, rating value) as the resource content and
put all other data as resource properties (e.g. number of taggings).

Thoughts ...

Thanks,
Chathura