On 06/07/2009, at 12:05 PM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:

> 2. The info won't be up-to-date. Would it be too much to ask to search
> the database directly using regexes?

Yes.

We wouldn't allow direct searching from the web interface with regexes  
for two related reasons:

1/ A single search with the most basic of regexes would take several  
minutes, if not hours. It isn't computationally trivial to search for  
a small string in a very large string of over 10 GB, let alone a  
regex. Words can be indexed, regexes cannot.

2/ Even if we could find a way to make the former performant, a  
malicious regex could significantly expand this time taken, leading to  
a denial of service.

--
Andrew Garrett
Contract Developer, Wikimedia Foundation
[email protected]
http://werdn.us




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