Multi-user PDF search

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So you have a collection of thousands of PDF files.  You use Easy PDF Search to create a full text database that you use to search your PDF collection.  Now you want to allow other users to do the same.  What are your options?

Easy PDF Search Basic Edition allows up to 2 other users to search your PDF database, while the Standard Edition allows as many users as your machine can support.

Configuration

On the machine where the Easy PDF Search full text database database was created, in the Connect to Database window, select the Local database item and also the Database will be shared via hotspot item.

 

Starting the hotspot – Basic Edition

Click on the Start hotspot button on the toolbar.

Enter the hotspot settings you want to apply.

When you click the Start button, the hotspot will be active.  On the toolbar, there is now a Stop hotspot button.

 

Starting the hotspot – Standard Edition

Similar to the Basic Edition, click on the Start hotspot button on the toolbar to open the hotspot settings window.

You can learn more about the various hotspot settings for the Standard Edition here.

In short, you can support more users on the Standard Edition, and each user can be assigned roles that limit their access to your PDF libraries.

Connecting to a hotspot

In the Connect to Database window, select the Easy PDF Search Server item, and enter the IP address and port of the machine where the hotspot is active.

If you are connecting to a hotspot running the Basic Edition, leave the Login value empty.  If you are connecting to a Standard Edition server, you need to enter the Login value.

Click on the Connect button to connect to the hotspot-enabled database.  You can now search the PDF files in that database.

Searching PDF files using word stemmers

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Easy PDF Search by default searches for complete words/phrases in your PDF files.  For example, if we search for the word like, only files containing that exact word are returned and highlighted in the search results.

If we wanted to search for words starting with the word like, we can perform a prefix search using the * character e.g. like*

This returns all words with the prefix like.  Unrelated words (from a grammar perspective) like likelihood and likewise, will be returned, while a related noun like liking will not be returned.

Stemmed words

Stemming is the process of removing a part of a word, or reducing a word to its stem or root.  In the example above, the words like, likes, liking, liked, and likely all share the same root word i.e. like.

When we want Easy PDF Search to use stem words when searching e.g.

we need to first create a stem database, then search that stem database.

Creating a stem database

To create a stem database, click on the Options > Stemmer language > Settings item.

In the Stemmer Settings window, select up to 5 languages to create a stem database for.

You can create stem databases for the following 27 languages:

  • Armenian
  • Basque
  • Catalan
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hindi
  • Hungarian
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Lithuanian
  • Nepali
  • Norwegian
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Serbian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Tamil
  • Turkish
  • Yiddish

When you want to search the stem database, select the stem language you want to search in from the Options menu.

Easy PDF Search then displays the stem language database that the search will be performed in.

In the search results, the stem database that was searched will also be displayed.

Testing the stemmers

To test which words stem to the same root word, you can use the test utility in the Stemmer Settings window.  Select the language you want to test, then click on the Test … stemmer tab.

Enter the search word, then a list of words you want to check if the root word matches the search word.

Next, click on the Test button.  Non-matches will be displayed in a strike-out manner.

Download a 14-day trial of Easy PDF Search now and experience how easy and fast it is to search your PDF files collection, now with the ability to perform stem word searches.

Using the bookmarks bar in Easy PDF Explorer

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The Bookmarks bar in Easy PDF Explorer appears below the main menu in Easy PDF Explorer.

Using the Bookmarks bar

The bookmarks lets you quickly open a folder or file by clicking on the item on the Bookmarks bar.  To place an item, drag and drop the folder or file from the Explorer window to the Bookmarks bar.

For example, this is the visual representation when you drag a folder over the Bookmarks bar.

When you drop the item on the Bookmarks bar, a button is created to represent the folder.

When you now click on that button, the active Explorer window will open to that folder.

Similarly, when you drag a file item on to the Bookmarks bar, a button is created for that file.  In the image below, we have 2 file items – a PDF file and an Excel workbook.

When you click on the file name on the Bookmarks bar, the active Explorer window will open to the folder containing that file, and highlight the file name.

Opening the context menu for items on the Bookmarks bar

You can open the context menu associated with the folder or file item by right-double-clicking on the button in the Bookmarks bar.  The image below shows the context menu when we click on our Excel file item.

Rearranging items on the Bookmarks bar

Right click on the folder or file item, then drag and drop the item on its new position.

Removing items from the Bookmarks bar

Right click on the folder or file item and drag it away from the Bookmarks bar.

 

Extracting files from a Thomson Reuters FileCabinet CS database

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We recently had a user that had to extract Word and Excel documents from a Thomson Reuters FileCabinet CS database using  SQL Blob Export.  The user was helpful enough to send us a couple of samples of the raw data stored in the table, allowing us to inspect the data in detail.

Turns out Thomson Reuters stores the files in a different manner to what SQL Blob Export expected, so we had to make some adjustments to the export process.

Beginning with version SQL Blob Export 6.1, you can now export items from your FileCabinet CS database.  The same feature is found in SQL Image Viewer.  When you run a query to return the items, it will be shown as OLE Structured Storage packages.

You can then export the files using the export wizards.

If you encounter a situation where SQL Blob Export or SQL Image Viewer is unable to export your files, please send us an email at support@yohz.com.

It would be very helpful to also attach a couple of samples of the rows that failed to be exported.  To extract the data exactly as stored in the database in SQL Blob Export, please do the following:

  • select the Extract bin files option on the Options page
  • once the export process has completed, you will find files with the .bin extension.  Please send us a couple of those files so that we may check how the data is stored in your database.

 

Filtering libraries in Easy PDF Search

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In Easy PDF Search 7.4, you can now filter the list of displayed libraries.  Say we have the following category and library structure:

To display only the PostgreSQL related libraries, we enter postgresql in the Filter libraries area.

Partial searches are also possible e.g.

To filter on multiple values, enter each word separated by a space e.g.

In the above example, Easy PDF Search will display all libraries containing the words postgresql or arduino.

If you need to filter phrases, enclose the phrase in double quotes e.g.

In this case, only libraries containing the word postgresql admin or arduino are displayed.

Download a 14-day trial of Easy PDF Search now and start searching your PDF files fast and work with the search results easily.

Export database images to Excel

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SQL Image Viewer (Professional edition) helps you export your database images to Excel in a variety of ways.  You can display images inline together with the other column values:

or as a link to the exported images:

or as inline images with links to the exported images:

Steps to export your images to Excel

We first enter the query to retrieve the images and any other fields we want to export to Excel e.g.

Next, click on the Export all data button and select the Export to Excel option:

If you have multiple data sets, you can select which data set(s) you want to export.  In our example, we only have a single data set.

On the next page, enter the column containing the images if not already entered by SQL Image Viewer.

We then select how to display the images in the Excel worksheet.  You can display the images in the worksheet itself:

or as a link in the worksheet, where the images will be exported to disk and the link will open. those images:

or as both inline images and a link:

Download a free 14-day trial

Download a 14-day trial of SQL Image Viewer now and start exporting your database images  and data into Excel worksheets in a few simple steps.

Searching on DJI drone tag values

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Easy Photo Search 2.2 and newer now stores the following tag values from DJI drone photos:

  • GPS longitude
  • GPS latitude
  • relative latitude
  • absolute altitude
  • gimbal roll degree
  • gimbal pitch degree
  • gimbal yaw degree
  • gimbal reverse
  • flight roll degree
  • flight pitch degree
  • flight yaw degree
  • cam reverse

To search on these tag values, click on the Add attribute button on the toolbar, then select the DJI values you want to search on.

The DJI tag values are also automatically displayed in the tag values window when you select the photo from the search results.

Finally, you can customize the information profiles to display the DJI tag values.

Download and use a 14-day trial of Easy Photo Search now to search your photos based on EXIF values easily.

ChatGPT integration

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We recently added the option to ‘chat’ with ChatGPT in Easy DICOM Viewer and Easy PDF Search, as these 2 products are used in research settings and having the ability to obtain answers from ChatGPT within the product was a useful feature.

What advantage does our ChatGPT integration offer over simply opening a browser session and connecting to the ChatGPT server?

Chat session organization

You can start multiple chat sessions and organize them by categories.   You can define as many categories and start as many chat sessions as you require.

Chat session persistence

All your chat sessions are automatically restored when you open the application.  This ensures you never lose any of your previous chat responses.

Customizable display

There are also various settings you can use to customize and display the chat session.

Per-chat settings

For each chat session, you can change settings like the maximum tokens, input language and response temperature.

This gives you better control over how ChatGPT responds to your queries.

Multi-language support

You can use different languages in our ChatGPT integration.  We use Google Translate to translate your questions and the responses.  For e.g. this is a sample chat session where the questions were entered in Japanese, and the responses translated to Japanese from English.

Of course, you can also choose to display the English translations.

If you want to give our ChatGPT integration a try, download a free 14-day trial of Easy PDF Search or Easy DICOM Viewer now.

See also:

 

Getting your ChatGPT API key

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To use the ChatGPT UI in our products, you need to provide an API token.

You will need to first create an account with OpenAI, using this URL (https://chat.openai.com/auth/login).

Once your account has been created and validated, open this URL (https://platform.openai.com/) to create your API token.

Click on the account settings on the top right, then click on the View API keys item.

On the next page, click on the Create new secret key button to generate a new key.

Enter a description for the key, then click on the Create secret key button:

A new key is then created for you.

Copy and paste this value into the API token field in the Chat Settings window.

See also:

 

Advanced hotspot settings in Easy PDF Search

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Easy PDF Search now lets you share your index database with even more users and control access at a finer level with the Standard Edition license.

So say you’ve indexed tens of thousands of your PDF files.  Instead of each user in your company indexing the same files and having the same database on their machine, you can now share your index database with as many users as your hardware can support.

The Basic Edition license allows you to share your database with up to 2 remote users and has basic hotspot functionality.

The Standard Edition license lets you set up roles which controls access to your libraries:

and users which allows you to define different logins and assign roles to each user.

You can also set up a self-signed certificate to encrypt your connections using SSL for improved security.

If you’re concerned that your users may overload your machine with their search requests, you can define a limit to the number of result rows returned.

If this limit is reached when your users perform a search, a message so that they are aware that the search results have been truncated.

So if you need to share your index database with more than 2 users or require better control over security and access to your libraries, the Standard Edition license will meet those requirements.

Download a 14-day trial of Easy PDF Search now and experience how easy it is to share your index database and help your users perform lightning-quick searches on your PDF collection.