User Guide

148 Chapter 8 Verity Spider
Verity Spider Syntax
The following section shows the syntax for several basic types of Verity Spider
indexing tasks.
Overview
Before you create an indexing task for a new collection, you should make copies of
the relevant default style files to ensure that you have a set of template style files in a
known, stable state.
Keep in mind that running multiple simultaneous Verity Spider jobs on the
Information Server host may cause performance problems for searches. This does
not mean you should never run indexing jobs when users may be searching, because
your collections are available for searching even while indexing jobs are running.
With an eye toward optimizing performance, you should try staggering your indexing
jobs to avoid overloading your server.
The Verity Spider command
At its most basic level, a Verity Spider command consists of the following:
vspider -initialize -collection coll [options]
Where -initialize is one of -start or -refresh (when starting points have
changed), and
-collection is required to provide a target for the Verity Spider, and
[options] can be a near limitless combination of the options described later in this
chapter.
For example:
c:\cfusion\bin\vspider -common c:\cfusion\verity\common
-collection c:\new -start http://localhost -indinclude *
Note that there are of course dependencies for other options, depending on the
nature of the indexing task. Some examples are:
• To build a new collection, you must use
-style.
• To control how Verity Spider operates, including which documents it indexes, you
should use at least some Verity Spider options.
Note that if you do not run the Verity Spider executable from its default installation
directory, you must include that directory in your path. This is because the Verity
Spider executable depends on other files to run properly.
The default location for the Verity Spider executable is as follows:
verity/prdname/platform/admin
Where verity/prdname is the user-definable portion of the installation directory,
and
platform will vary depending on your operating system.