Bug #26183 Can't find a bug using up-level category
Submitted: 8 Feb 2007 12:02 Modified: 8 Feb 2007 12:57
Reporter: Sergei Kulakov (Candidate Quality Contributor) Email Updates:
Status: Verified Impact on me:
None 
Category:MySQL Websites: bugs.mysql.com Severity:S2 (Serious)
Version:http://bugs.mysql.com/search.php OS:Any (www)
Assigned to: Assigned Account CPU Architecture:Any
Tags: qc

[8 Feb 2007 12:02] Sergei Kulakov
Description:
I was investigating what's up with the new GROUP BY name resolution behavior and some other MySql 5 changes and tried to find bugs about it. Eventually, I did find some with Google, and http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=11211 among them. The bug's title is "GROUP BY doesn't work correctly". Then I wondered why I couldn't find the bug with your site and tried to find it usign the parameters from the bug page. 

When I search by:

that is status=Closed, severity=S1, category=optimizer

I do find it among 37 bugs found. But if I change the category to the more general upper level "MySql Server" I get 592 bugs but 11211 is not among them! To make sure it is the category that is the problem I did dumped all of them into one page and search for it by "work correctly" - and no, it was not there. Of course, this can be limited by using "correctly" in the words field (just 15 bugs). 

So, it turns out that the bugs submitted in more detailed subcategories cannot be found unless the user knows exactly what subcategories they are in! Practically, this means the bugs cannot be found at all, because no one really knows where, among the long category list, they might happen to get classified in. I thought upper level categories would include bugs from all subcategories and, considering the number found (592) this may well be so (though people might tend to just submit everything to MySql Server). Now the question is why 11211 is not found. And that is not so it should?!

When I'm looking for bugs I cannot know where they are, I just need them all. It seems most people just select "MySql Server" for all query related bugs, without taking an effort to classify them better, and their bugs are found. But those few that do take the effort and specify a subcategory effectively make their bugs not searchable?

How to repeat:
See above and 
http://bugs.mysql.com/search.php?search_for=correctly&limit=All&order_by=&direction=ASC&cm...

Suggested fix:
When searching for bugs, first make a list of all subcategories that should be found. When an upper-level category is given, include all its subcategories in the list. Then search for all bugs whose (sub)categories are IN the list.
[8 Feb 2007 12:57] Valeriy Kravchuk
Thank you for a detailed bug report. I saw similar problem many times (and used to search in MySQL Server and several subcategories that may be relevant for the bug I need). But this is very inconvenient for casual users of bugs.mysql.com.
[27 May 2008 21:13] Diego Medina
One more vote to implement this please.