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. Megjithatë, 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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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. Megjithatë, Unë kurrë nuk e humbi interesin tim në produktin dhe, më shumë interesant, Problemi më i madh i findability.

Unë me të vërtetë nuk më pëlqen se fjala, por unë jam duke u përpjekur për të marrë të përdoret për të 🙂 Pavarësisht se është ngathtësi, findability është një e vërtetë (ose të paktën, zhvillim) term. Do a jetojnë kërkim Nëse jeni të interesuar në gjetjen e më shumë definicione teknike, por mënyra unë të shpjegojë atë rreth zyrës është si kjo:

Kapitalin intelektual që nuk mund të gjenden si edhe mund të mos ekzistojnë.

Është pothuajse aq e vërtetë për të thënë këtë:

Kapitali intelektual që nuk mund të gjendet shpejt dhe me lehtësi mund edhe të mos ekzistojë.

Kapitali intelektual (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. Kjo është ajo ku fillon problemi 🙂

Këto ditë, incizim normalisht nënkupton se ideja dokumentohet ne formen e nje doc Word MS, Manual Excel, etj. and eventually stuck in electronic format on a hard drive somewhere. IC obviously takes other forms like, si imazhet, videos, blogs shumë informative, wikis … it’s impossible to list them all. Në të njëjtën kohë, IC është ruajtur në një sërë vendesh si sistemet e skedarëve, Bazat e të dhënave, Linja e aplikacioneve të biznesit (ERP, CRM, SharePoint, Documentum), etj.

Kjo është Problemi findability: se si mund të shpejt dhe lehtë të gjeni IC që është ruajtur në dhjetra ose qindra të formateve në dhjetra apo qindra e mijëra, dhjetëra mijëra (Unë guxoj të them qindra e mijëra) i lokacioneve në një organizatë?

It’s a difficult problem to solve. Bill angleze ka qenë i shkruar në lidhje me 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, një francez i çmendur (Ferdinand de Lesseps) filluar një kompani private për të ndërtuar kanali, projekti u braktis për disa vite, 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, vazhdoj, dhe më në fund përfundojë). And yet, it’s still not truly finished. Me aq sa unë e di, Bankat e Kanalit e kurrë nuk kam takuar kendin e tyre prehje, 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, sidomos pasi ajo lidhet me 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, Unë jam duke shkuar për të përpiqen dhe të vënë një kuti rreth problemit për të treguar se sa e tmerrshme ajo është me të vërtetë (kjo është më e tmerrshme se sa mendoni 🙂 ). It’s awful, but at least it does fit inside a box.

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I’m starting day 4 of FAST’s partner training headed up by Larry Kaye here in Needham, MA.

This 5-day session is broken down into classes (3 dhe 2 days respectively) entitled "FAST ESP: Developing Custom Search Applications for Alliance Partners I" and "FAST ESP: Developing Custom Search Applications for Alliance Partners II".

This is a real boot camp type class. The material is deep (very, very deep). The instructor (Larry) clearly knows his stuff. 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, kjo është një hop, kaloni dhe të hidhen larg për të përfunduar këtë logjikë brenda një pjese web ose faqe aplikimit:

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

namespace Conchango
{
    klasë InvokeSimpleFASTQuery
    {
        i pandryshueshëm pavlefshme Kryesor(varg[] args)
        {

            #rajon Nisja komunikimin tonë me FAST
            ISearchFactory searchFactory;

            NameValueCollection nameValueCollection = i ri 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

             Launch një pyetje

            varg queryString = "test";

            Pyetje query = i ri Pyetje(queryString);

            query.SetParameter(BaseParameter.Clustering, i rremë);
            query.SetParameter(BaseParameter.NAVIGATION, i vërtetë);
            query.SetParameter(BaseParameter.NAVIGATION_DEEPHITS, 100);

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

            IQueryResult Rezultati = searchView.Search(pyetje);

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

            int docCounter = 0;

            ndërsa (docCounter < result.DocCount)
            {

                docCounter    ;

                IDocumentSummary thisDocSummary = result.GetDocument(docCounter);

                Konsol.WriteLine("[" + docCounter + "]: " + thisDocSummary.GetSummaryField("url").Vlera String);

            } // ndërsa

            Konsol.Linja leximi();
            #endregion

        }
    }
}

Ajo gjeneron rezultatin e mëposhtme:

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Here is some code that shows all available views from a FAST server based on the named QRServer (Procesi server me të cilën ne komunikojmë). I offer this up to give you all a taste of what it’s like to use the provided FAST API.

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


namespace Conchango
{
    klasë EnumerateFASTViews
    {
        i pandryshueshëm pavlefshme Kryesor(varg[] args)
        {

            ISearchFactory searchFactory;

            NameValueCollection nameValueCollection = i ri 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);

            Konsol.WriteLine("Total Views: [" + searchFactory.GetSearchViewList().Numëroj + "].");

            int i = 0;

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

            }

            Konsol.Linja leximi();

        }
    }
}

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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Unë kam qenë me fat që të ketë një mundësi për të punuar në një FAST <–> SharePoint integration project and thought I’d continue to share my limited experience with the community.

Microsoft is in the process of purchasing FAST. I don’t know anything about the schedule except that it should be finished in the "2nd quarter" which I assume means by 06/30/08.

My project’s design, at a very high level, calls for creating a few web parts that have roughly the same look, feel and functionality as the standard MOSS search box and core results 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, though it’s obvious to me that some of the FAST engineers clearly understand MS tech (or they’ve made use of contractors).

FAST:

FAST is a big monster server product (and I don’t mean that in a bad sense; MOSS is a big monster product to me as well). 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, shows results, is big on relevancy (though I don’t see how it handles social relevancy). Megjithatë, 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, as I learn more.

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.

There seems to be a web service interface as well.

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, not so sure if it’s production-ready.

That’s it for now. As I progress through the project, I’ll post more.

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Në mënyrë për të komunikuar me kërkim të shpejtë përmes API e saj, ne kemi nevojë të dimë portin në të cilin po kandidon QRServer.

Kam ndjekur këto hapa për të gjetur atë:

1. Hyni në faqen FAST admin (http://server:port/admin).
2. Shkoni tek Vështrim i Sistemit.
3. Locate "Search Dispatcher" dhe klikoni në ikonën tejqyrë:

   

4. Unë sukses përdoret vlera, 15100 for "Info Name" = "http":

   

Shënimet:

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

2. Përdorni këtë kod të ngjashëm në vijim të ilustroj me shembull konkret një lidhje me FAST:

 ISearchFactory searchFactory;

    NameValueCollection nameValueCollection = i ri 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. Në qoftë se ju të vini një port wildly pasakta, ju merrni një mesazh të dobishëm gabimi:

4. Megjithatë, në qoftë se ju të vini numrin e portit të listuara në vështrimin e përgjithshëm (15102) you don’t get that helpful error message. Në vend të kësaj, më vonë, kur ju përpiqeni të hyni në ndonjë të dhënave nëpërmjet një kërkim apo referencë një pamje 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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