Paul Taylor and Aurelién Mino have completed the re-write of our search server — please help us test this new code-base. Here is Paul’s write up:
This update rewrites the existing Search Indexer and Searcher with a
pure Java release whilst maintaining full compatibility with the
existing Musicbrainz Server, prototype by luks, completion by ijabz and
murdos. The aims were
1. Better performance
Search performance should be greatly improved for indexing and
especially search.
The intermediate python layer has been removed.
The webserver layer has been removed
When searching have a single Java VM , that can now be properly
configured/optimized
The latest Lucene and Java libraries are used
2. Better Search Results
The following bugs have already been fixed
Perhaps most importantly stop words are no longer and issue so when do a
search for something that exists in the database you should always get a
match, i.e artist:”the the” or track:”is this it?”
and range queries work properly
i.e
and theres a host of other bugs and enhancements that can now be
resolved quite easily
3. Maintainability
The code has been simplified, i.e no hand coding of xml or html or
having to deal with escape characters.
Now has a full set of unit tests, can also easily generate metrics such
as code coverage reports.
No dependency on Linux or Python, making it easier for new developers
to contribute, removing the burden from ruaok.
Testing Stage
Please try it out on http://musicbrainz.homeip.net both as a websearch
and as an XML Service to find any omissions in functionality and any
situations where the search results aren’t good as before.
Paul / ijabz
MetaBrainz Blog 
The second example should read:
http://musicbrainz.homeip.net/search/textsearch.html?type=track&query=track%3A%22Side+of+the+Road%22+AND+artist%3A%22beck%22+AND+release%3A%22Sea+Change%22+AND+qdur%3A%5B99+TO+110%5D+&handlearguments=1&adv=1
Fantastic 🙂 Any chance of instructions so that people can build their own MusicBrainz search servers?
How old is the database ?
Searching for X-it should give me two groups, a greenlandic one and a german one. I only get the german one on the homeip server.
I don’t know if it’s related but I can’t test the AJAX search over there*.
There is an unsolved bug #3728 I wanted to test (Search “Quốc Đại” and you don’t find him, because of the “Đ”).
* whatever the arguments, it finds “amegnameloppy” and “rareRoyatride” only.
Direct search “Quốc Đại” : http://musicbrainz.homeip.net/search/oldsearch.html?query=Qu%E1%BB%91c%20%C4%90%E1%BA%A1i&type=artist&limit=25
Direct search “pipo” : http://musicbrainz.homeip.net/search/oldsearch.html?query=pipo&type=artist&limit=25&handlearguments=1
= amegnameloppy
= rareRoyatride
I think the DIrect Search must be pointing to a different db to the db that the indexed search was built from so you can’t test the DIrect Search. Changes to Direct Search are not actually part of this test release.
Hi guys,
Since 2 days i cant find the tagger when searching on your website. i’m cataloguing my complete collection right now, but when picard doesn’t find an album, i can’t even help myself by using the website anymore. Is the feature removed or is the site buggy?
@Patrique: You can add the tagger buttons back by adding a &tport=8000 to the end of the lookup URL.
Worth noting that manually adding that to the URL only works on certain pages, not all. The safest way for non-experts to reopen Picard and initiate a new search (for anything) from the top search bar. Then you can do your proper searches from the website and the tagger buttons will appear until you either log out or your session expires, IIRC.