User Guide

Creating a Searchable Data Source 273
Creating a Searchable Data Source
You must do the following steps to create a searchable data source:
1 Create a collection.
You can do this either through the ColdFusion Administrator or
programmatically.
2 Populate and index the collection.
You must select the data and generate the index. You can perform this task either
through the ColdFusion Administrator or programmatically.
3 Design a search interface and a results page so that users can access the
searchable data source.
You can use the Verity Wizard in ColdFusion Studio to create ColdFusion pages that
index and search a collection. (The wizard does not create a page for creating the
collection.) To run the wizard, select File > New and select the Verity Wizard from the
CFML tab in the New Document dialog box.
Creating a Collection
The Verity engine performs searches against collections. A collection is a special
database created by Verity that contains pointers to the indexed data that you specify
for that collection. ColdFusion’s Verity implementation supports collections of three
basic data types:
• Text files such as HTML pages and CFML pages
• Binary documents (see “Supported File Types” on page 271)
• Result sets returned from cfquery, cfldap, and cfpop queries
You can build a collection from individual documents or from an entire directory
tree. Collections can be stored anywhere, so you have a great deal of flexibility in
accessing indexed data.
You can use either of the following methods to create a Verity collection:
• Make selections on the ColdFusion Administrator Verity Collections page
• Code the
cfcollection tag
Using the ColdFusion Administrator to create a collection
You can use the ColdFusion Administrator to create a new collection or map an
existing collection.
Creating a new collection
Use the following procedure to create a new collection.
To create a collection:
1 Open the ColdFusion Administrator Verity Collections page.