Verity engine: PHP vs. Cold Fusion

I am currently deciding which middleware to use for building some large dynamic sites. I am very experienced with both PHP and Cold Fusion and know the benefits/drawbacks of each. The one big thing that I will require to do is to index pdf, doc, txt, html, database data, etc. so it can be searched on by keyword. From my own personal experience I have used a Verity system which I find works very well. Cold Fusion comes with the Verity K2 built right in, however PHP does not. This is very important to have and will be the deciding factor if PHP can't support this kind of system.

Now for the two big questions:

1. Is there any way possible to use PHP with a Verity engine?
2. Is there any similar products such as Verity that do the same sort of thing that work with PHP?

Any help would be great!

Verity can run independently, really w/in any web server environment. It is not dependant on ColdFusion (for instance, it is also bundled with some Sun products). You would need to contact Verity directly to discuss the options (verity.com). ColdFusion does have the advantage of having Verity tags built-in.

Yes, there are many search engine alternatives to Verity - from engines built in PHP to Perl, C/C++, Java, as well as outsourced or hosted options; there are even search 'appliances', such as the one you can purchase from google.

Outside of the Verity question, there are a wide range of factors that can determine what server-side applications development platform you choose. It would help us to know what your other considerations are in order to give you additional advice. Some points to consider are TCO (total cost of ownership), programming experience (either yourself, or whoever you are going to hire/have already hired to program your site), support availability, platform dependence, database connectivity, vendor lock-in, etc.

I've moved this thread to "Development Software", since your questions really fall outside the scope of the typical PHP topics.

Hi


You pose a question about "PHP vs. Cold Fusion", but your post has nothing to do with your topic! True CF has Verity K2 embedded into it, but this does not make PHP less of a programming language, compared to CF! In PHP, you can design a very powerful indexing system, that can use files or a database to store the indexes! This is not very hard to do, if you design your service with good logic!



F!

Fataqui has an excellent point. While Verity may be ideal for flat files - such as HTML, PDF, Word, etc - it does not function as well in environments where pages are dynamically generated from content stored in a database. For all intents and purposes, even if you're not planning on developing a dynamic website now, it will most likely need to happen in the near future. At that point, use of Verity becomes less ideal as the engine for your search; you are most likely to need a custom-built solution which can handle the specific way your website delivers content. In that sense, PHP does indeed offer much more powerful coding capabilities than CFML (as Fataqui has already pointed out ).

Have you ever looked at phpWebsite? I know its kinda of a generic CMS system, but it already has a build in search engine, document manager, and several other features that are worth considering before starting from scratch. The FatCat system also makes searching by subject, and keywords are possible I believe.

Its worth a look.

As far as a custom system goes, my suggestion is forget PHP and CFML unless you have already decided how the infromation is going to be stored.

My $.02 is to use a database like MySQL for medium/medium large jobs and Oracle or DB2 for extremely large database work. If you would choose say MySQL, then PHP would make a logical choice.

Again I don't know that much about the project in terms of Scale, but I do know one client of mine is using phpWebsite to manage a very active intranet site that is updated almost daily with news/info documents, etc. and extremely happy with the system and has only had minor compliants from staff. Most relating at "how dull the theme looks".

Again, its not the tool for every job, but might be worth considering.

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