I have Umbraco site with a custom backend database of several thousand members using a custom membership provider.

These members need to be searchable on all manner of associated data.

The members have many complex properties in a multiple level table hierarchy, many of which are required to be in the search.

A naive search technique of fully instantiating the objects and filtering those properties is unusably slow. I could just store search properties on the master member table on every update, but for scalability and data integrity I'd prefer to use Examine.

This is the first time I've ever used it, so I have some questions!

1. There is a requirement for a postcode search - i.e. "distance from X". The only way I can think of doing this is to run the Examine search for everyone, getting the latitude and longitudes back, then post filter on calculated differences - is there a better way to do that?

2. Some of the properties are lists of supported actions stored in tables - i.e. if a member can do A, F and G, and a user searches for members who can do A, D, E - that's a match on A. What's the best way of dealing with this? I can probably come up with hacky ways of smushing the information into strings, but is there a more effective way?

3. Simple one - as per my code below I am setting up the info in a SimpleDataSet, meaning I have to update ExamineIndex.config as well as this code every time - not a big deal, but just wondered if there was a more dynamic way?

The budget for this is not great, so the shortcuttiest way of doing things is probably fine :)

Any help gratefully received!

My (working, and beautifully fast) basic code so far is:

    public class UFCMemberFinderDataService : ISimpleDataService
{
    public IEnumerable<SimpleDataSet> GetAllData(string indexType)
    {
        using (DbConnection conn = ConnectionHelper.Open(Settings.MainConnectionSettings))
        {
            DbCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand();

            cmd.CommandText = @"select UserIID from UserProfileData where IsPublishable = 1 and IsAuthorized = 1 and IsActive = 1";

            using (DbDataReader rs = cmd.ExecuteReader())
            {

                List<SimpleDataSet> data = new List<SimpleDataSet>();

                while (rs.Read())
                {
                    MemberWrapperBase mwrap = MemberWrapperBase.Get(DataHelper.FromDB<int>(rs["UserIID"]));

                    if (!(mwrap is Administrator))
                    {
                        RegisteredUserBase rub = (RegisteredUserBase)mwrap;

                        data.Add(new SimpleDataSet()
                        {
                            NodeDefinition = new IndexedNode()
                            {
                                NodeId = rub.UserIID,
                                Type = "CustomData"
                            },
                            RowData = new Dictionary<String, String>()
                            {
                                { "IID", rub.UserIID.ToString() },
                                { "Type", rub.GetType().Name },
                                { "FirstName", rub.FirstName },
                                { "LastName", rub.FirstName },
                                { "CompanyName", rub is Company ? ((Company)rub).CompanyName : "" },
                                { "PostCode", rub.Address.PostCode },
                                { "IsFeatured", rub.IsFeatured ? "1" : "0" }
                            }
                        });
                    }
                }

                return data;
            }
        }
    }
}

Called with:

ISearchResults results = ExamineManager.Instance.SearchProviderCollection["UFCMemberSearcher"].Search(SearchString, true);