Auza.Net has released another free online service called PRCPassers.com (http://
www.prcpassers.com), a fast search engine for names of board examinees who passed the
PRC exams. It is still in its beta stage which means there are still improvements being done
but the site is already usable by the general public. The service is unique compared to all
other websites that publish lists of board exam passers because it is a real search engine
where you simply type in the last, first or middle name or any combination of these and the
results are shown immediately. The user is no longer required to click several links before
finding the list of names which can take quite some time.
PRCPassers.com keeps an index of the board exam passers allowing for a very fast search,
while providing the user a link to the official results on the PRC website so the results can
be verified. In contrast, the other websites that publish the board exam results simply copy
the data and republish them.
The search engine is a customized WordPress plugin that includes a very fast search
algorithm developed specifically for this type of index. It also performs the indexing
everytime a new list of board exam passers are published by the PRC. Even though the
plugin performs complicated functions, the development period was relatively short, a total
of 5 working days only. This is because the developer only had to develop the functions
that are specific to the search engine. All other functions like authentication and database
abstraction are already handled by WordPress (http://www.wordpress.org), a very popular
content management system.