beta test a new PDB search engine

Anyone want to beta test a new Plants Database search engine? It is located here:

http://plantsdatabase.com/new_search.php

The biggest feature is a mis-spelling auto-correction. Try mis-typing some words. It searches common name, family, genus, species, and cultivar. It also should be about 10 times faster as the old (and current) search engine.

Dave

Wow! The spelling correction is VERY forgiving. Thank you, thank you. It did come up very quickly. Going back now to play with it some more. You are so good to us!!

phillodendron
hybiscus
cacti
potatoe

Not sure I understand the results on some of these. :-)

Hey, Dave-

Oooooh, thank you, thank you, thank you for persevering in this area of close-to-correctly spelled words! (It's a tough nut to crack for sure!)

A few things I found:

kifsgate got me some strange results, but not Kiftsgate, (which is what I was expecting).

Jatrofa and jatrophus (should be jatropha) returned zero results; jatrupha was close enough and got the expected results.

Hemerocalis (should be HemerocaLLis) got only one result, which was misspelled with one "L"...but Hemerucallis got all 24,000+ entries.

leonururuss apparently was close enough to get leonurus (correct spelling - I guess it "knew" to overlook the extra "ur" and the extra "s" on the end...)

fatherwort gave me Scutellaria lateriflora - I was thinking it would "see" the "wort" on the end and return birthwort, motherwort, etc. Maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but how it got Scutellaria lateriflora is a head-scratcher ;o)

Clearly the new engine is not ready to be used, but it's getting close. I'm toying with the idea of, instead of automatically correcting it for you, giving you a "did you mean..." ala google. That'll take more work, though. I've already been working on this new search for quite a while...

dave

Heehee... I tested it with 'voilet' and there was a 'voilet' entry in the PDB! Should I flag it as an error?

http://plantsdatabase.com/go/56885/index.html

Yes, flag as error.

Thanks Flit :)

I just typed in "nasturstian" (one of the flowers I have never been able to spell right) and nothing came up.

this is very cool, I sooo look forward to the finished version. I like your idea of the 'google-ish' treatment.

I searched for 'day lily' and it brought up anything with 'lily' in the name. It didn't realize I was looking for 'daylily'. I tested google with the same search - it asked "Did you mean: daylily".

Cheri'

Karrie20x: I have improved the algorithm so it now finds nasturtium when you misspell it like you did.

sundry: I doubt I'll ever get it as good as Google, but maybe. Google has a few more resources at their disposal than little ole me. :-)

dave

dave, don't be so modest ... you are soooo much better than google. ;-)

Cheri'

Pretty darn cool!!!1

Holey Cow, Dave! You are too good to us :)

That was interesting! I tried echinacea - always one I have to think over! I spelled it echinaca, echinaeca and echineaca and got Aloe humilis var. echinata and Brazil wood caesalpinia echinata.

Then I added an 'e', still incorrect - echinaecea and got the coneflower family!