Search results are poor

[David Boettger]

Ubuntu Software Center 5.0.6
Ubuntu 11.10

The results returned by the Ubuntu Software Center's search engine are poor. As an example:

1. Search for "tomcat"
- One completely irrelevant result returned

2. Search for "tomcat7"
- Only the tomcat7 package returned

3. Search for "tomcat7-"
- tomcat7-docs/admin/examples/common/user packages returned

4. Search for "servlet"
- All tomcat6, tomcat7, jetty, and other packages returned

Supposedly a fix was put in previously https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/software-center/+bug/731193 but clearly the problem isn't fixed -- or this is a new incarnation of it.

This might be related to -- or a duplicate of -- this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/software-center/+bug/852039

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

I add a tomcat task as it would be nice if tomcat would include a metapackage that points to the latest tomcat. If that does not make sense, please close this bugtask, but it would mean that tomcat finds exactly the recommended tomcat by default.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Please note that searching for tomcat does find a lot of tomcat packages, but they are hidden under the "technical items" as they are no end-user-applications.

[David Boettger (boettger1)]

@mvo I don't think your response is consistent with the observed behavior that I documented above. If search results are hidden (which I think is poor UX design), then why aren't they *always* hidden, regardless of the search term used?

It would be nice to have "tomcat" point to the newest tomcat, but that's nowhere near as important as simply returning the correct search results. As long as USC can't be depended on to return accurate search results, it's useless.

[David Boettger (boettger1)]

@james-page Why was this moved to tomcat7? It's a problem with USC, not with tomcat.

[James Page (james-page)]

@David

It just has a task for tomcat7 - thats all.

I want to consolidate to a single tomcat package for the quantal dev cycle so this might be feasible to resolve with a metapackage for tomcat -> tomcat7.

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

Any progress on this?