David Cassel

While looking at the database configuration in MarkLogic Server, have you ever noticed the Word Query link on the left? (Click Configure -> Databases -> the name of one of your databases -> Word Query.) Ever wonder what it does? Word Query is a simple way to specify what parts of a document should be [...]

In many search applications, when we show the results of a user’s search, we also want to display the search that was done by putting the query string into a text box, especially if the search is built up from an advanced search screen. In some cases, we might want to modify the search before [...]

I recently got to teach the MarkLogic Essentials class for MarkLogic University. To illustrate custom facets, I implemented one on the fly with the class watching. No pressure. :) The good news is that it (almost) worked with the first try — there was just one little problem with the display. This post shows the [...]

I’m going to be teaching the MarkLogic University Basic XQuery class tomorrow, and as usually happens when I get to teach, I’ve learned something while reviewing the material. In this case, it’s the differences among text(), fn:string() and fn:data(). text() This one is commonly seen at the end of an XPath expression. It returns a [...]

A little while ago I ran YSlow, a Firefox plugin that evaluates how quickly a web page loads, against an Application Builder based app I’d written. YSlow gave my site a grade C, with an overall performance score of 71 (out of 100). Some of the suggestions that YSlow offered are not simple to implement [...]

In a recent post, I wrote a tutorial showing how to add a view to an Application Builder-based application. As one step, I made a copy of the rewrite.xqy module under the custom directory so that I had an easy way to add my new view. There was one thing about the approach that I [...]

In MarkLogic Server, we tend to think about the documents that we put into the database. Most of the documentation, conversely, talks about fragments. I’ve had to learn some about fragments recently, so I figured I’d share. What are fragments? Fragments are one layer of granularity of data in a MarkLogic Server database. In particular, [...]

A number of MarkLogic Server functions require a query as a parameter. Every now and then, however, you want to call one of those functions without specifying a query. There’s an easy way to handle this: you can use cts:and-query(()) as an empty query. This empty query matches everything, so it’s a simple way of [...]

In my last post, I showed how to add maps to the front page of a MarkLogic Server Application Builder-based application. But what if you want to add a whole new view? I’ll show you how in this tutorial. The Application I’m going to use my pin collection app, as I did in the previous [...]

Using MarkLogic’s Application Builder makes it a snap to put together an application quickly. Whenever I build an app this way, I feel like I’ve gotten 80% of what I need. This post shows how to take the next step and add a common feature: maps. To illustrate these steps, I’m going to use an [...]