Busy times & Sitecore MVP 2023 & Sitecore Search

-

 I realize that things have been quiet here. But I have mainly been working behind the screens on Architectures, Estimations for new projects.

And when you are busy... time tends to fly by :) Regardless, some interesting things have happened in the meanwhile! 

MVP 2023

Starting with the most important one (and yes, I have screamed it out waaay before this blogpost through my socials...):

I have been awarded the Sitecore Ambassador MVP title for 2023! This is my 9th consecutive MVP-ship, and I hope that I can uphold this stretch for a longer time still.



This year, my focus will be on getting the most out of my renewed MVP-ship by collecting and sharing as much information as possible through the various webinars and enablement trainings that are related to the host of new products / platforms Sitecore has launched. 

Sitecore Search

Secondly, I have been investing some time into Sitecore Search. My first and foremost goal is to position it next or alongside platforms such as Algolia, SearchStax (Studio), Coveo, Cludo, ...

In itself, the search solution functions as a crawler that allows for manipulation from a user-friendly UX that then makes the results available through a performant API.

With a long road ahead with regards to comparing platforms and matching them with customer requirements, there is however one piece of functionality that I feel is required in order for Sitecore Search to become a strong market competitor.
And that is the ability to create new ad-hoc indexes, facets and configure these to be populated through an API. This would allow (much like Algolia does) for smooth inclusion into a composable architecture where data from other platforms also needs to be brought into a search index.

Search has now been conceived as an input output platform. Meaning that information gets crawled and is displayed back onto the site through a Search UI. However, a search / indexing platform can be used for much more and will further help support your implementation through lightning fast lookups, providing an engine for the implementation of functional requirements, rather than just providing the result for a customer query.

I'm assuming that this will land on the roadmap of the Sitecore Search platform sooner than later, but at this moment, unless you are just looking for a quick Site-search, this kind of feels as a good iteration of the platform with some missing functionalities....


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stupid exception: Device is not ready – System.IOException .net

-
When installing a Sitecore implementation from an development server environment to my laptop I ran into an absolutely stupid error. And it's great to have this kind of errors pop up from time to time even if you have been in the development world for so long and are still unable to fix it immediately. So, what error did I get? Device is not ready – System.IOException .net That is right... Nothing at all related to Sitecore. But then you start to doubt that as my stacktrace showed to Lucene [IOException: The device is not ready. ] System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String maybeFullPath) +1091 System.IO.Directory.InternalCreateDirectory(String fullPath, String path, Object dirSecurityObj, Boolean checkHost) +1413 System.IO.Directory.InternalCreateDirectoryHelper(String path, Boolean checkHost) +92 Sitecore.IO.FileUtil.EnsureFolder(String path) +128 Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider.LuceneIndex.CreateDirectory(String folder) +100 Sitecore.Co
Read more

Date Ranges in C#

-
DateRange utility class Throughout development there are a number of typical things that tend to recur. One of these is implementing a means to display start and end dates for News, Events, Symposiums, Lives etc etc Writing a little class that manages printing these dates seemed like a necessary task that just had to be done in order to make this tedious task be a thing of the past. Therefore I created my "DateRange" class (what's in a name) that should handle this entirely for you. The Idea The intriquities of displaying a datetime range should be an abstraction. You should only need to worry about passing the correct dates (start and end - if applicable) to the Utility class combined with an optional formatting. The class can be entirely configured through use of Enumerations for all the separate settings such as DayFormat etc. An additional class was used to implement this utility, the StringValue attribute class. You can easily use thie class to a
Read more

Sitecore 8.2 in-depth preview + 8.3 update info and Sitecore Ecommerce information

-
Image
During the last Sitecore User group session here in Belgium, Ryan Donovan was featured as the central speaker. The following two topics were on the agenda: Sitecore Commerce An in-depth information on 8.2 and 8.3 I was impressed by the drive behind Ryan and his team(s). It emphasized the drive that is pushing Sitecore forward. Sitecore is putting a lot of effort in producing well hardened and tested product releases that bring new features and rich applications. Sitecore Commerce Previous Sitecore commerce solutions were structured around either SCpbCS and SCpbMD. However, the vNext commerce product has been newly developed from the ground up. Previously, the commerce solution focussed itself around the architecture of Commerce Server to provide and API, manage the products and to derive the entire feature set from. With this Commerce vNext solution, Sitecore has set forward the aspiration to become one of the market leaders in commerce. The fist aim is to focu
Read more