From: eprints-tech-request@ecs.soton.ac.uk <eprints-tech-request@ecs.soton.ac.uk> On Behalf Of John Salter
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2024 2:59 PM
To: eprints-tech@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Subject: RE: [EP-tech] Date ordering issue when searching eprints

CAUTION: This e-mail originated outside the University of Southampton.

Hi Stephen,

I’m guessing the records in question have a fully-qualified date (or one with as much resolution as the rest of the search results)?

If not, I think a partial date (e.g. just a year) is normally sorted at the end of the results.

Did you trigger the manual reindexing via the web interface for the item, or via a command-line route?
If it was via the web interface, does running:
~/bin/epadmin reindex [archiveid] eprint [eprintid]

result in anything different?

If you still have some example ‘bad’ records, it’s worth comparing the data in the eprint tables, and the ones used for searching (assuming you’re not using Xapian):
E.g. (replace 123456 for a ‘bad’ record id):
SELECT * FROM eprint__rindex WHERE eprintid = 123456 AND field != 'documents';

SELECT * FROM eprint__index_grep WHERE eprintid = 123456;
SELECT * FROM eprint__ordervalues_en WHERE eprintid = 123456;

For the last one, look at the following columns:

date_type

date

dates_date

dates_date_type

I have occasionally seen some issues with this data getting out of sync, but never been able to work out why.

When an EPrint is updated, it keeps track of which fields have changed. If the dates fields haven’t changed, the values in the above tables may not get corrected.

I don’t feel like I have a full understanding of this – but the above may help with your investigations.

Cheers,

John