Re: An API to search public repositories

Hi Evgeny,

When Artifactory contacts a remote repository it first sends a HEAD request to see whether the artifact exists and if it has changed (changes are only checked  for snapshots - the maven metadata is queried). Even though there are more powerful search APIs provided by repo managers, including Artifactory itself, this is the fastest direct query form, which is standard and works with 'dumb' HTTP repositories as well (in fact, HTTP also offers conditional-GET in a single request, but repo1 does not support it, so we use a HEAD then GET). Other than that, each remore repository has an expiring cache for snapshots, a cache for failed retrievals (network errors etc.) and a cache for non-found artifacts (all configurable from the remote repo advanced configuration panel).
The actual resolution order between repositories is explained here: http://wiki.jfrog.org/confluence/display/RTF/Understanding+Repositories (the last section called "Resolution Order").

HTH,

Yoav