Introduction

Searching records is a common requirement in web applications. There is usually a requirement to allow users to quickly access the data they want from large records. While it is possible to do this using simple SQL queries, sometimes it is more efficient to use a search engine.

Solr is a popular search platform from the Apache Lucene project. Its major features include powerful full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search, near real-time indexing, dynamic clustering, database integration, rich document handling, and geospatial search. In this tutorial, we'll be looking at performing full text search using Sunspot, which is a library that enables integration of Solr in ruby applications.

Project Setup

I've created a simple app on Github which I'll be using here instead of starting with a new project. The app shows a list of products with their name, image, price and description. I have included some seed data so you can run rake db:seed if you don't want to input the data your self. The application uses Paperclip for image attachments and since I use image resizing, ImageMagick will need to be installed on your system. You'll also require the Java runtime installed on your machine to proceed with the tutorial.

The image below shows the application. The search form at the top does nothing at the moment, but we will enable a user to search through the products and get results based on not just the product name, but also on its description.

Searching

We'll start off by including the Sunspot and Solr gems in our Gemfile. For development, we'll use the sunspot_solr gem that comes with a pre-packaged Solr distribution, therefore we won't need to install it separately.

gem 'sunspot_rails'
    
    group :development do
        gem 'sunspot_solr'
    end

Run bundle install and then run the following command to generate the Sunspot configuration file.

rails generate sunspot_rails:install

This creates the /config/sunspot.yml file which lets your app know where to find the Solr server.

To set up the objects that you want indexed, add a searchable block to the objects. In the starter project, we have a Product model with name, price, description and photo fields. We will enable a full-text search to be done on the name and description fields. In /models/product.rb add:

searchable do
        text :name, :description
    end

Start the Solr server by running:

rake sunspot:solr:start

Sunspot indexes new records that you create, but if you already have some records in the database, run rake sunspot:reindex to have them indexed.

We then add the code in the Products controller that will take the user's input and pass it to the search engine. In the code below, we call search on the Product model and pass in a block. We call the fulltext method in the block and pass in the query string that we want to be searched for. There are several methods we can use here to specify the search results we want. The search results are then assigned to @products which will be available to our view.

def index
    	@query = Product.search do
    	    fulltext params[:search]
    	end
    	@products = @query.results
    end

Run the application and you should now be able to search through the available products. 

Solr will do a case insensitive search through the product names and descriptions using the word or phrase input. You can make one field hold more weight than the other to improve the relevancy of your search results. This is done with the boost method which is passed a value that determines the priority assigned to the different fields. The field with the highest value will carry more importance. 

In our application, we can specify the products which have the searched string in their name to be scored higher. We do this by making the following changes in /models/product.rb.

searchable do
    	text :name, :boost => 2
    	text :description
    end

Reindex the records with rake sunspot:reindex and now the results with the searched term in the product name, will be placed higher than those with the term in the description. You can add more records to test this out.

Faceted Browsing

Faceted browsing is a way of navigating search data by way of various sets of associated attributes. For example, in our application, we can classify searches for products by price range and give counts of each range.

First add price to the searchable method in /models/product.rb

searchable do
    	text :name, :boost => 2
    	text :description
    	double :price
    end

Then call facet in the controller. The products will be faceted by the range of their price in intervals of $100.00. Here we assume that all products cost less than $500.

def index
    	@query = Product.search do
      		fulltext params[:search]
    
      		facet :price, :range => 0..500, :range_interval => 100
      		with(:price, Range.new(*params[:price_range].split("..").map(&:to_i))) if params[:price_range].present?
    
    	end
    	@products = @query.results
    end

In the view file, paste the following at the place you want to see the faceted results.

<div class="row">
      	<h3>Search Results</h3>
      	<ul>
    		<% for row in @query.facet(:price).rows %>
        		<li>
          			<% if params[:price_range].blank? %>
              			<%= link_to row.value, :price_range => row.value, :search => params[:search] %> (<%= row.count %>)
          			<% else %>
              			<%= row.value %> (<%= link_to "X", :price_range => nil %>)
          			<% end %>
        		</li>
    		<% end %>
      	</ul>
    </div>

Now when you search for a term, there will be a list of facets showing how many results are in each price range. In our example application, if you search for the word 'camera', you will see the following list.

100.0..200.0 (2)
    200.0..300.0 (1)
    300.0..400.0 (1)

Each item is a link and when clicked on, you will get a list of the products that meet your search term and that also fall into the price range you clicked on. 

The link passes the original search query and the chosen range to the index action. Since it passes the range as a string, we use Range.new(*params[:price_range].split("..").map(&:to_i)) to convert it back to a range. You could use conditional statements to output more user friendly links like $100 - $199 (2) instead of 100.0..200.0 (2) but we won't get into that here.

Advanced Configurations

There are some further configurations you can do on Solr to customize how it works. In its default, Sunspot performs full-text search by dividing the search string into tokens based on whitespace and other delimiter characters using a smart tokenizer called the StandardTokenizer. Then the tokens are lower cased and the exact words are searched for.

This might be okay at times, but you might also want to configure the search engine to allow for human error or to allow queries to be made that aren't too strict. For instance, you might want to provide some synonyms to the engine so that when the user doesn't enter the exact text that is in your records, they might still find similar results. An example of this, is that you might have an item labeled 'ipod' in your records. You may provide synonyms like 'iPod', 'i-pod' and 'i pod' to increase the odds of users finding the data.

Another useful functionality you could add is stemming, which will allow Solr to match different words with the same root. For example, if the user entered 'run', they would get results with 'run' and 'running'. Or if they searched for 'walk', the results will include data that contains 'walk', 'walking', 'walked', and so on.

Solr settings are found in solr/conf/schema.xml and that is the file to modify to change the server's configuration. This is out of the scope of this tutorial, but for more on this, check out the advanced full-text config post and the Solr wiki.

Conclusion

Now to finish up, stop the Solr server by running:

rake sunspot:solr:stop

We have looked at how to use the Sunspot gem to utilize the Solr search engine in a Rails app. Besides the settings we have used, there are plenty more you can use to customize your search results. Be sure to check the Readme file for more options.

Solr gives you the kind of searching capability that isn't easy to achieve with regular SQL queries. For simple apps, with a small amount of database records, SQL queries will do without much of a performance hit. But if you want something that is scalable, then it is worth looking into Solr or other available search engines.

Real Estate Weekly – 4/25/14
The Daily Record

Potomac Photonics moves to bwtech@UMBC

Potomac Photonics, a digital manufacturing firm specializing in micro technologies for the biotech and medical device industries, has relocated from Rockville to Catonsville in Baltimore County. The company’s headquarters, R&D and digital fabrication production facilities are now in a 9,000-square-foot space at the bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park. Potomac Photonics uses lasers, 3D printing and other digital technologies to manufacture devices and parts at the molecular level for pharmaceutical testing, medical treatment and other uses. The company’s Potomac Digital Fabrication Center is the third university-related 3D fabrication lab in the county, joining the CCBC Fab Lab and Towson University Object Lab. The company currently employs 20 people, including engineers and technicians, and anticipates hiring additional workers at all levels.

What Can You Do With Your Major?

So you are taking classes and obtaining a degree but are you wondering what’s next?

Well the Career Services has great resources to help you learn more about your major and career opportunities.

Major Sheets can help you look at some sample job titles within the various industries that match up to your degree

Links By Major provides you with websites and national organizations related to your major

Career Path can be used to view videos, suggested course selections and information on career paths that other UMBC students/alumni have taken; you will also find a sample resume for your major

The O*NET System is the nation’s primary source of occupational information. It can help you learn key attributes and characteristics of workers and occupations

For more information, you can check out the following:

http://www.careers.umbc.edu/students/majorsheets/

or stop by Math/Psyc 212 to view our hard copy Career Resources, and/or schedule anappointment with a Career Specialist

 We also suggest getting involved on campus and joining Academic and Departmental Clubs!

http://osl.umbc.edu/orgs/

As cyber attacks multiply, so do insurance policies that cover damages

In the wake of high-profile security breaches that have affected major companies and universities, a growing number of firms are pushing a relatively new product for businesses: cyber security insurance.

American International Group Inc. is the latest big name to  introduce a new offering. AIG this week announced it has started offering cyber security insurance to cover property damage and bodily injury.

“More insurance companies are jumping on that bandwagon and starting to offer cyber insurance,” Zuly Gonzalez, CEO of Baltimore-based cyber firm Light Point Security said.

The question for businesses is whether such policies are worth the money.

Women of Color Represent Fewer than 3 Percent of Employees in Technology Fields. Here’s How Some Successful Developers Are Changing That.

Smart cookie.

Poornima Vijayashanker

That’s the nickname kids called Poornima Vijayashanker in the first grade. Vijayashanker remembers being the only non-white kid in her class. But she stood out for another reason: She quickly became the best student, excelling in creative writing and math and routinely winning recognition during school awards ceremonies. The name stuck.

“I liked that name. And from that point on, I cared less about my skin color and embraced being a smart cookie,” says Vijayashanker, 31, of Palo Alto, Calif.

She taught herself to type at 10 on her mother’s typewriter. She took apart her first computer at 14. Her tech interests eventually led her to Duke University where she double-majored in electrical engineering and computer science.

“Since I was accustomed to being different throughout my childhood, I wasn’t bothered when I stepped into my first class in engineering school and was surrounded by mostly male students,” she says.

Free trial on Treehouse: Do you want to learn web development and design? Click here to try a free 14-day trial on Treehouse.

Enter the Femgineer

After graduating in 2004, Vijayashanker moved to Silicon Valley and started her career as an R&D engineer at Synopsys. It didn’t take long for Silicon Valley’s start-up environment to draw her in. She became a founding engineer at Mint.com where she became one of their first engineers and their only female engineer or “femgineer.”

Women comprise less than one-third of all employees in the tech sector, according to Kaplan, an education company. Women contribute to just 1.2 percent of open source software.Being the only woman or woman of color engineer never dissuaded Vijayashanker from pursuing her career goals.

“Too often we let what is different about us on the outside hold us back on the inside,” she says.

While at Mint, she pursued creative writing and began writing on her Femgineer blog about engineering and entrepreneurship. After Intuit acquired Mint in 1999, her love for yoga led her to found BizeeBee, which assists fitness businesses with customer management, and she works with private instructors and studios nationwide. Last year she transformed her Femgineer blog into a business.

“Femgineer is an education company, which helps tech entrepreneurs and professionals build products and companies,” Vijayashanker says. “We have a few offerings: I run a monthly event series called the Femgineer Forum, I teach and mentor women online, men too, and we have some free resources like a YouTube channel full of talks and mini-courses and a free email course, which I run periodically.”

Vijayashanker says at the time she entered the tech field, she didn’t think much about it being a male-dominated field. But over time she witnessed how it affected “the rate of innovation on teams, success in recruiting and retaining technical talent, and ultimately building companies.” But things are changing.

“There is a great shift happening in tech now that didn’t exist 10 years ago when I was getting started,” Vijayashanker says. “That shift is the availability of resources like Treehouse that make it easy for anyone to learn how to code and other skills. Hence it doesn’t matter who you are, your background, or age, you just have to have the willingness to learn and become a smart cookie.”

More Women of Color Needed in STEM

Women held 200,000 of the 1.6 million engineering jobs in 2010. Hispanic women held 14,000 and black women 10,000, according to the National Science Foundation.

Tonicia Kelly

Tonicia Kelly credits her father, a programmer and analyst, for steering her toward STEM in her teen years. The senior user interface engineer from Atlanta focuses on client-side technologies, and over much of her career she’s been a backend and full-stack developer. She earned degrees in computer science and mathematics.

“My education in STEM has afforded me the opportunity to work as a software engineer in both the public and private sectors for companies ranging from health care to network security,” Kelly says. “I have also spent 15 years doing freelance web design and development work while in college and as a side gig while working as a professional.”

Only 4 percent of people in software development, application and systems jobs are African-Americans and 5 percent are Latino. Women of color represent fewer than 3 percent of employees in technology fields, Kaplan says.

Kelly volunteers with Black Girls Code in Atlanta and took part most recently in its “Build a mobile app in a day” event at Spelman College.

To women who show an interest in STEM, she advises they “remain steadfast” at learning and growing in their chosen discipline. She says women should never shy away from reinventing themselves to stay relevant in their field or in transitioning to another STEM-related career and to always keep current with changes in the technology world to maximize opportunities.

“If you have no technical background, I think the only way to get started is to dive in. Be hungry and ambitious and you will be successful!” Kelly says.

No Tech Experience, No Problem

You don’t need to be an engineer to be in tech. John Jay High School speech teacher Andrea Mancillas-Cabañas of San Antonio, Texas, learned how to build her first mobile app called Brides & XV. It took her eight months.

Andrea Mancillas-Cabañas

“I created the app to fill a need for people planning weddings and quinceañeras in the Rio Grande Valley,” Mancillas-Cabañas says. “I was planning my own wedding, and I realized that there were wedding apps for large cities; however, the Rio Grande Valley area didn’t have a wedding app available to quickly find and contact a vendor. I created it to make the wedding planning process easier for this demographic area.”

Mancillas-Cabañas has since begun working on a website for a fitness group that she started called Fit Moms & Moms-to-Be. She plans to expand the blog to a social media website for moms nationwide to connect with other moms who value fitness and health. Rather than hire a website designer, she is developing the website herself. She said her coding experience with mobile app development gave her the confidence to tackle tech-related endeavors on her own and helped her save money, too.

“I didn’t realize that knowledge of coding, and not being fearful to learn coding, would help me so much with my interests,” Mancillas-Cabañas says.

She has even taught her own students to code and mentored two students who created an app for their high school. She recently met with the district’s technology and communications departments to obtain approval for the app, expected some time in May.

“My students truly believed in creating an app for John Jay High School, just as I believed in creating my Brides & XV mobile app,” Mancillas-Cabañas says. “If more students, minorities or not, were given technology-related projects in which they have an interest, then we might have more minorities in the technology field.”

The post Help Wanted: Women of Color Needed in Technology, Web Jobs appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

Curtis Menyuk (Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) recently received the IEEE Photonics Society William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award. The award is given to recognize an exceptional single scientific contribution which has had a significant impact in the field of lasers and electro-optics in the past 10 years. The award is given for a relatively recent, single contribution, which has had a major impact on the Photonics Society research community. It may be given to an individual or a group for a single contribution of significant work in the field. Menyuk received the award, “For seminal advances in the fundamental understanding and mitigation of polarization effects in high-performance optical fiber communication systems.”

Menyuk received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from MIT in 1976 and the Ph.D. from UCLA in 1981. He has worked as a research associate at the University of Maryland, College Park and at Science Applications International Corporation in McLean, VA. In 1986 he became an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and he was the founding member of this department. In 1993, he was promoted to Professor. He was on partial leave from UMBC from Fall, 1996 until Fall, 2002. From 1996 – 2001, he worked part-time for the Department of Defense, co-directing the Optical Networking program at the DoD Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences in Adelphi, MD from 1999 – 2001. In 2001 – 2002, he was Chief Scientist at PhotonEx Corporation. In 2008 – 2009, he was a JILA Visiting Fellow at the University of Colorado. For the last 25 years, his primary research area has been theoretical and computational studies of lasers, nonlinear optics, and fiber optic communications. He has authored or co-authored more than 230 archival journal publications as well as numerous other publications and presentations, and he is a co-inventor of 5 patents. He has also edited three books. The equations and algorithms that he and his research group at UMBC have developed to model optical fiber systems are used extensively in the telecommunications and photonics industry. He is a member of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the IEEE. He is a former UMBC Presidential Research Professor.

Professor Kevin Sowers, Professor of Marine Biotechnology at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET), and Professor Upal Ghosh, at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, have received a $100,000 grant from the Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII). The grant will fund research to that will ameliorate the environmental harms of PCB’s. The program is an initiative of the Technology Council of Maryland (TEDCO) created in 1998 to spur commercialization of scientific research in Maryland as part of the state’s efforts to foster economic development through academic research.

Sowers is a global leader in environmental science and has pioneered a method that uses activated carbon pellets seeded with microorganisms that degrade the concentration of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in sediments. In recent laboratory experiments, the cultures Sowers created resulted in over 80% reduction in the PCB mass after treatment.

“Our hope is that this method for treating PCB’s will have a tangible impact in restoring previously degraded areas – both on land and in bodies of water,” says Sowers. “PCB’s have long been a harmful and largely intransigent pollutant and our work is intended to address serious health impacts these chemicals have on people, animals and the environment.”

Sowers is collaborating in this work with Upal Ghosh, a professor at the Department of Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering at UMBC. “The magnitude of PCB sediment contamination and associated water quality problems in the United States is reflected in more than 3,200 state and local advisories that have warned the public about of the health impacts of consuming contaminated fish. These warnings cover 24% of total river miles throughout the United States,” Ghosh says. “The advisories include 100% of the Great Lakes and 35% of all other lakes nationwide.” PCBs are frequently reported as the leading contaminants at impacted sites. Current remediation technologies are expensive, destructive to environmentally sensitive areas, and difficult to coordinate with local activities. The technology proposed by Sowers and Ghosh addresses existing challenges and is especially suitable for environmentally sensitive sites such as wetlands and difficult-to-reach areas under-pier structures in contaminated harbors. This technology advances an in-situ remediation approach using activated carbon that has been recently developed by Ghosh and commercialized through a startup company Sediment Solutions.

The Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) was created as a partnership between the State of Maryland and five Maryland academic research institutions (Johns Hopkins University, Morgan State University, University of Maryland College Park, University of Maryland Baltimore and University of Maryland Baltimore County.) The program is designed to promote commercialization of research conducted between and among the partnership universities and it leverages each institution’s unique strengths.

“The MII program is critically important to our partner universities and the citizens of Maryland,” noted Russell Hill, IMET Director, “because it facilitates the transformation of basic science into practical and far-reaching applications. We are grateful for TEDCO’s support and foresight in addressing this important environmental issue and are proud of the excellent research being done by Dr. Sowers and Dr. Ghosh.”

TEDCO

The Maryland State Legislature created TEDCO in 1998 to facilitate the transfer and commercialization of technology from Maryland’s research universities and federal labs into the marketplace and to assist in the creation and growth of technology-based businesses in all regions of the State. TEDCO is an independent organization that strives to be Maryland’s leading source for entrepreneurial business assistance and seed funding for the development of startup companies in Maryland’s innovation economy.

INSTITUTE OF MARINE AND ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY

Located in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology is a strategic alliance involving scientists at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, the University of Maryland Baltimore and the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Scientists are engaged in cutting-edge research in microbiology, molecular genetic analysis and biotechnology, using marine resources to develop new drug therapies, alternative energy and other innovations to improve public health and economic opportunities. IMET also contributes to sustainable marine aquaculture and fisheries in the Chesapeake Bay and other marine ecosystems.