Michael Posted 29 July , 2003 Share Posted 29 July , 2003 Pals I've never had much luck searching the CWGC site using the 'Regiment' field. Is there a particular way of entering the Regiment in the box ? Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry Denham Posted 29 July , 2003 Share Posted 29 July , 2003 The regiment wording has to be exactly as that given in CWGC's database - which is a bit difficult with so many variations of presentation in common use! However, the database only has one format for each regiment. Keep trying all variables - with and without any punctuation/brackets etc. Remember that a list of a specific regiment will not include those on attachment as that info is held in a different field. When phase one of the new site goes live the Regiment filter will be absent because it is of limited use due to this fact. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris_Baker Posted 30 July , 2003 Share Posted 30 July , 2003 Terry, the more you've told us about the CWGC website the more amazed I am. It's child's play to write a piece of code to search flexibly on a data field like Regiments, so you pick out say the county name in a longer total. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry Denham Posted 30 July , 2003 Share Posted 30 July , 2003 Chris You are correct but that is with the benefit of hindsight. At the moment the searchable fields on the site are searched from the beginning to the end meaning that you have to have an exact match for as far as you go. This will be changing on the new site where you can search by cemetery. Here you will be able to enter any part of a string and it will be found. The Regiment thing will be sorted with several other points when further developments are added. I have already made the case for this facility to be retained. We have to start with the animal we have got rather than the one we think we ought to have. We have to look forwards and avoid the same mistakes if possible! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Posted 30 July , 2003 Author Share Posted 30 July , 2003 Thanks Terry. I searched for a chap in the West Kents and copied the text of the Regiment. I then tried to search again on the surname with the Regiment pasted into the search field but to no avail. Never mind, I was only trying to cut corners anyway. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry Denham Posted 30 July , 2003 Share Posted 30 July , 2003 Michael Enter the Regiment exactly as.. Queen's Own (Royal West Kent That pulls out all West Kents Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Posted 30 July , 2003 Author Share Posted 30 July , 2003 Thats it. Thanks a Terry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry Denham Posted 30 July , 2003 Share Posted 30 July , 2003 As I said before.. This field is not easy to use at the moment. You have to enter the exact words including punctuation as it is held in CWGC's database starting at the beginning of the name - in the same way as you have to enter the surname. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Posted 30 July , 2003 Author Share Posted 30 July , 2003 Terry I tried the same thing with the Buffs and this is what you enter The Buffs (East Kent Regiment ie copy the text from another search and leave out the final bracket. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry Denham Posted 30 July , 2003 Share Posted 30 July , 2003 Michael You only need to type suffient letters of the name to make it unique so you could simply have typed....The Buffs...rather than the full title Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Hesketh Posted 31 July , 2003 Share Posted 31 July , 2003 Could there not be a list on the site of the regimental titles used by the databse to prevent this confusion? Seems a simple solution to me...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry Denham Posted 31 July , 2003 Share Posted 31 July , 2003 Andrew You are right in that a drop down list of possible regiment names does seem a simple solution. However, life is never that simple! There are several thousand names in the list making such a facility totally impractical. There are hundreds in just such a list on the SDGW CD but that does not list all of them nor does it have to cope with Commonwealth units, naval and RAF units or certain civilian organisations - and those from WW2 when many units had slightly different names to those in WW1!! There is also the additional problem that some regiments changed their names part way through the qualifying dates (ie Newfoundland Regt to Royal Newfoundland Regt & ASC to RASC etc etc) The easiest solution is to provide a search by part of the name (ie type in 'Kent' and it would produce all entries with that word in the title - or 'West Kent' or 'East Kent' etc to narrow it down). As I said above, the database is moving that way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clive Maier Posted 31 July , 2003 Share Posted 31 July , 2003 It is always a good idea for a search screen to show what the search will accept in terms of strings, wild cards and Boolean operators. There should not be any need for users to resort to trial and error in order to find out. Unfortunately, lots of search screens are implemented in this way. The CWGC search seems to accept very little. Common wild cards like ‘$’, ‘&’, ‘*’, ‘?’, and ‘!’ are not recognised and neither are the Boolean operators ‘AND’, ‘OR’, ‘NOT’. A partial string will work, but only if it forms the first part of the term you are looking for. For example, ‘kent’ will find Kent Cyclist Bn. but will not find Queen's Own (Royal West Kent Regiment). The string is not case-sensitive but unlike most searches it is punctuation-sensitive, so ‘queens’ will not find Queen's Own (Royal West Kent Regiment) but ‘queen’s’ will. The safe way is to use ‘queen’ instead. A drop-down list is not the answer. What is needed is properly implemented searching and as Chris has pointed out, this is standard stuff. Pattern matching is built into SQL and other database languages. Terry mentioned that improved searching would be implemented on the Cemetery field in the new database but not immediately on the Regiment field. I truly don’t understand this. Why delay implementing standard technology on the other fields? In case all this should seem too critical, let me say I am more than grateful that the database is online at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry Denham Posted 31 July , 2003 Share Posted 31 July , 2003 Clive You may have missed this at the beginning of the thread. The 'Regiment' filter will not be available on phase one of the new site and so the searching process is not yet relevant. However, when greater facilities are available in phase two the process you describe will be the only sensible way forward. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MartinWills Posted 31 July , 2003 Share Posted 31 July , 2003 It seems to me that we have more than enough budding software engineers amongst the Pals. Perhaps we should offer to work up a new web search facility for the CWGC ourselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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