I’ll be doing my first ever online presentation hosted by the mighty EMC marketing machine at 12:00 noon EDT on Wednesday, 01/28. I have no idea what to expect from this, in terms of attendance. Madankollu, since I’m leading it, I can tell you what to expect if you make time for it.

I’m going to be describing what we here at EMC mean when we talk about "Enterprise Search." I’m distinguishing between regular old SharePoint Search (which is quite useful by itself) and Enterprise Search, which is a much bigger, nastier, interesting and perplexing problem to solve.

I’m going to make the argument that FAST is a good tool to use while trying to solve the Enterprise Search problem (and I make some analogies to canals while I’m at it). This obviously ties into SharePoint and will be a part of the community’s fabric over the course of 2009 and beyond. That’s the hook for anyone reading my blog here.

If you’re interested in FAST, I think you’ll find enough useful information to justify the time spent listening to me talk about it.

It’s a marketing presentation, but all of the marketing stuff is at the end, so you can always drop off at that point.

The mighty EMC marketing machine has provided me with a signup link, so please use it to register.

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Abbona għall-blog tiegħi.

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I had the good fortune of attending some partner training from FAST last spring. I was really impressed with the product and was looking forward to working with it. Unfortunately, one project fell through and then EMC acquired my company. Predictably, a certain amount of chaos ensued while we learned about EMC and EMC learned about us. FAST technology dropped a few points on the priority scale during that period. Madankollu, I never lost my interest in the product and, more interestingly, the bigger problem of findability.

I really don’t like that word, imma qed nipprova nidra. 🙂 Minkejja li hija l-iskomda, findability is a real (or at least, emerging) term. Do a live search if you’re interested in finding more technical definitions, but the way I explain it around the office is like this:

Intellectual capital that cannot be found may as well not exist.

It’s almost as true to say this:

Intellectual capital that cannot be found quickly and easily may as well not exist.

Intellectual capital (IC) starts as an idea in a person’s head and is then refined via collaboration with colleagues and interactions with various communities. To be truly useful, these resulting ideas must be recorded. Dan huwa fejn tibda l-inkwiet 🙂

Dawn il-ġranet, recording normally means that the idea is documented in the form of an MS Word doc, Excel workbook, eċċ. and eventually stuck in electronic format on a hard drive somewhere. IC obviously takes other forms like, like images, videos, highly informative blogs, wikis … it’s impossible to list them all. Fl-istess ħin, IC is stored in a variety of places like file systems, databases, line of business applications (ERP, CRM, SharePoint, Documentum), eċċ.

This is the findability problem: how can quickly and easily find IC that is stored in dozens or hundreds of formats in dozens or hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands (dare I say hundreds of thousands) of locations in an organization?

It’s a difficult problem to solve. Bill English has been writing about findability from a very grand perspective in what I have come to think of as the Panama Canal approach. The history of the Panama Canal is amazing. In a nut shell, a crazy Frenchman (Ferdinand de Lesseps) started a private company to build the canal, the project was abandoned for some years, picked up again and finally finished by the American government under President Roosevelt. This reminds me of Bill’s approach because as he rightly points out, solving the findability is both hard and never stops. It took years and years of effort from the some of the hardest working humans on the planet to start, continue, and finally finish). And yet, it’s still not truly finished. Safejn naf, the canal’s banks have never met their angle of repose, meaning that they have to be shored up and otherwise maintained even to this day. Solving findability is the same way. I definitely recommend that you read Bill’s series and subscribe to his blog for his point of view on findability, particularly as it relates to SharePoint.

I too am interested in this problem. Due to my exposure to FAST and on-going discussions on this subject with my brilliant EMC colleagues, I have some more ideas I plan to write about over the coming weeks and months. In my next article on this little series, I’m going to try and put a box around the problem to show how awful it really is (huwa aktar orribbli milli taħseb 🙂 ). It’s awful, but at least it does fit inside a box.

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Jien jibdew ġurnata 4 ta 'taħriġ sieħeb FAST tal immexxi mill Larry Kaye hawn fil Needham, MA.

Din is-sessjoni 5-jum maqsuma fi klassijiet (3 u 2 ġranet rispettivament) entitled "FAST ESP: Iżvilupp Custom Search Applikazzjonijiet għal Imsieħba Alleanza I" and "FAST ESP: Developing Custom Search Applications for Alliance Partners II".

Din hija boot camp klassi reali tip. Il-materjal huwa fond (ħafna, ferm fil-fond). L-instructor (Larry) jaf Jittieħed tiegħu b'mod ċar. I highly recommend this training if you considering it.

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This is a continuation in my FAST coding mini-series for SharePoint folk. The bit of code below executes a search for the term "test" in FAST via a Console application. Obviously, huwa tal-ħops, skip u jaqbżu l bogħod biex nagħlaq din il-loġika ġewwa parti web jew paġna applikazzjoni:

użu Sistema;
użu System.Collections.Generic;
użu System.Linq;
użu System.Text;
użu System.Collections.Specialized;
użu Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search;
użu Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Http;
użu Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Navigation;
użu Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Query;
użu Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Result;
użu Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.View;
użu System.Collections;

namespace Conchango
{
    klassi InvokeSimpleFASTQuery
    {
        statiku null Main(string[] args)
        {

            #reġjun Initialize komunikazzjoni tagħna ma FAST
            ISearchFactory searchFactory;

            NameValueCollection nameValueCollection = ġdid NameValueCollection();

            nameValueCollection.Add("fastsearchengine", "Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Http.HttpSearchFactory");
            nameValueCollection.Add("Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Http.QRServers", "fastdemoback:15100");
            nameValueCollection.Add("Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Http.RequestMethod", "GET");

            searchFactory = SearchFactory.NewInstance(nameValueCollection);

            #endregion

             Titnieda tiftixa

            string queryString = "test";

            Mistoqsija query = ġdid Mistoqsija(queryString);

            query.SetParameter(BaseParameter.Clustering, falza);
            query.SetParameter(BaseParameter.NAVIGATION, vera);
            query.SetParameter(BaseParameter.NAVIGATION_DEEPHITS, 100);

            ISearchView searchView;
            searchView = searchFactory.GetSearchView("sharepointconn");

            IQueryResult Riżultat = searchView.Search(query);

            Console.WriteLine("Total results from search: [" + result.DocCount + "].");

            int docCounter = 0;

            filwaqt li (docCounter < result.DocCount)
            {

                docCounter    ;

                IDocumentSummary thisDocSummary = result.GetDocument(docCounter);

                Console.WriteLine("[" + docCounter + "]: " + thisDocSummary.GetSummaryField("url").StringValue);

            } // filwaqt li

            Console.ReadLine();
            #endregion

        }
    }
}

Huwa jiġġenera-riżultat li ġej:

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Abbona għall-blog tiegħi.

Here is some code that shows all available views from a FAST server based on the named QRServer (l-proċess server li nikkomunikaw). I offer this up to give you all a taste of what it’s like to use the provided FAST API.

użu Sistema;
użu System.Collections.Generic;
użu System.Linq;
użu System.Text;
użu Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search;
użu Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Http;
użu Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Navigation;
użu Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Query;
użu Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Result;
użu Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.View;
użu System.Collections.Specialized;
użu System.Collections;


namespace Conchango
{
    klassi EnumerateFASTViews
    {
        statiku null Main(string[] args)
        {

            ISearchFactory searchFactory;

            NameValueCollection nameValueCollection = ġdid NameValueCollection();

            nameValueCollection.Add("fastsearchengine", "Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Http.HttpSearchFactory");
            nameValueCollection.Add("Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Http.QRServers", "fastdemoback:15100");
            nameValueCollection.Add("Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Http.RequestMethod", "GET");

            searchFactory = SearchFactory.NewInstance(nameValueCollection);

            Console.WriteLine("Total Views: [" + searchFactory.GetSearchViewList().Għadd + "].");

            int i = 0;

            foreach (object o fil searchFactory.GetSearchViewList())
            {
                Console.WriteLine("View [" + i   + "]: [" + o.ToString() + "].");

            }

            Console.ReadLine();

        }
    }
}

Note that I consider myself a barely competent C# programmer and I have thin skin, so don’t send any raspberries my way, especially re: the "foreach (object o in …)" construct 🙂

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Abbona għall-blog tiegħi.

Stajt ġiet xxurtjati li jkollhom l-opportunità li jaħdmu fuq FAST <–> Proġett ta 'integrazzjoni SharePoint u ħsibt I d tkompli jaqsmu esperjenza limitata tiegħi mal-komunità.

Microsoft huwa il-proċess ta 'xiri FAST. I don’t know anything about the schedule except that it should be finished in the "2nd quarter" li tassumi I mezzi 06/30/08.

Disinn tal-proġett tiegħi, fuq livell għoli ħafna, jappella għall-ħolqien ta 'partijiet tal-web ftit li jkollhom bejn wieħed u ieħor l-istess dehra, jħossu u l-funzjonalità kif l-kaxxa standard tfittxija MOSS u qalba riżultati web part, but pulling from FAST. I’ve made some baby steps in that direction.

FAST is a dedicated search engine. It’s not based on Microsoft technology, għalkemm huwa ovvju għalija li xi wħud mill-inġiniera FAST jifhmu b'mod ċar MS tech (jew li ħadthom għamlu użu ta 'kuntratturi).

FAST:

FAST huwa prodott kbir server monster (u jien ma jfissirx li f'sens ħażin; MOSS huwa prodott monster kbar lili kif ukoll). It appears to be based on Java and I noticed some apache stuff and maybe some PHP. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other bits of tech mixed in here and there. It definitely runs on windows server and is working fine in the virtual environment which I’ve been using.

It makes use of a facade web service that crawls SharePoint content for indexing in its special FAST way.

A SharePoint end user would be pretty much at home with FAST’s user interface. It has simple/advance search, riżultati turi, huwa kbir fuq relevanza (għalkemm I ma tara kif mankijiet relevanza soċjali). Madankollu, it does go further. Its stemming seems better. I really can’t articulate it well but I’ll just say "it’s better." You can take my word for it, or not 🙂 I may elaborate on this point in the future, bħala I jitgħallmu aktar.

MOSS:

FAST provides a .NET-friendly DLL that provides an interface to the FAST engine. This makes it possible for us to create web parts or application pages or whatever we want to query FAST and present the results.

Jidher li hemm interface servizz web kif ukoll.

I also have access to a FAST-provided web part that does integrate MOSS and FAST. I don’t know if this is a POC, something that was whipped up as a demo or what. It’s definitely a good learning tool, mhux hekk ċert jekk huwa produzzjoni lesta.

That’s it for now. As I progress through the project, I ser post aktar.

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Abbona għall-blog tiegħi.

Sabiex jikkomunika mal FAST Fittex permezz API tagħha, għandna bżonn inkunu nafu l-port li fih il-QRServer qed taħdem.

I segwita dawn il-passi sabiex tiġi lokalizzata:

1. Log fis-sit admin FAST (http://server:port/admin).
2. Mur Sistema Overview.
3. Locate "Search Dispatcher" u kklikkja l-ikona spyglass:

   

4. I użata b'suċċess il-valur, 15100 for "Info Name" = "http":

   

Noti:

1. Port 15100 appears to be the default out-of-the-box port number for the QRServer.

2. Uża din il-kodiċi simili għal dawn li ġejjin li instantiate xi konnessjoni ma FAST:

 ISearchFactory searchFactory;

    NameValueCollection nameValueCollection = ġdid NameValueCollection();

    nameValueCollection.Add("fastsearchengine", "Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Http.HttpSearchFactory");
    nameValueCollection.Add("Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Http.QRServers", "fastdemoback:15102");
    nameValueCollection.Add("Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Http.RequestMethod", "GET");

    searchFactory = SearchFactory.NewInstance(nameValueCollection);

3. Jekk inti pick port wildly żbaljata, ikollok messaġġ ta 'żball utli:

4. Madankollu, jekk inti pick-numru tal-port elenkati fuq il-ħarsa ġenerali (15102) you don’t get that helpful error message. Minflok, aktar tard meta inti tipprova l-aċċess kwalunkwe data permezz ta 'tfittxija jew referenza ħsieb FAST, you get an error. Debugging shows that the searchFactory’s view count is zero. You’ll be given the message "Failed to fetch Search View List".

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Abbona għall-blog tiegħi.