I’ll be doing my first ever online presentation hosted by the mighty EMC marketing machine at 12:00 saa sita mchana EDT Jumatano, 01/28. Mimi sijui nini cha kutarajia kutoka hii, in terms of attendance. Hata hivyo, tangu mimi nina kuongoza ni, Naweza kukuambia nini cha kutarajia kama wewe kufanya muda kwa ajili yake.

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. Kwa bahati mbaya, 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. Hata hivyo, I never lost my interest in the product and, more interestingly, the bigger problem of findability.

I really don’t like that word, but I’m trying to get used to it 🙂 Despite it’s awkwardness, findability is a real (au angalau, 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. This is where the trouble begins 🙂

Siku hizi, recording normally means that the idea is documented in the form of an MS Word doc, Excel workbook, nk. and eventually stuck in electronic format on a hard drive somewhere. IC obviously takes other forms like, like images, videos, highly informative blogs, Wiki … it’s impossible to list them all. Wakati huo huo, IC is stored in a variety of places like file systems, databases, line of business applications (ERP, Ali, SharePoint, Documentum), nk.

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, kuendelea, and finally finish). And yet, it’s still not truly finished. Mbali kama mimi najua, 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 (it’s more awful than you think 🙂 ). It’s awful, but at least it does fit inside a box.

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Mimi kuanzia siku 4 ya mpenzi FAST ya mafunzo inayoongozwa na Larry Kaye hapa katika Needham, MA.

Kikao hiki siku 5 ni kuvunjwa chini ndani ya madarasa (3 na 2 siku mtiririko) entitled "FAST ESP: Zinazoendelea Maombi Custom Search kwa Washirika Alliance mimi" and "FAST ESP: Developing Custom Search Applications for Alliance Partners II".

Hii ni kweli Boot kambi ya aina ya darasa. nyenzo ni kirefu (sana, kirefu sana). mwalimu (Larry) wazi anajua mambo yake. 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, ni hop, ruka na kuruka mbali wa kufuta mantiki hii ndani ya sehemu ya mtandao au ukurasa maombi:

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

namespace Conchango
{
    darasani InvokeSimpleFASTQuery
    {
        tuli utupu Kuu(string[] args)
        {

            #kanda Initialize mawasiliano yetu na FAST
            ISearchFactory searchFactory;

            NameValueCollection nameValueCollection = mpya 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

             Uzinduzi swala

            string queryString = "test";

            Swala swala = mpya Swala(queryString);

            query.SetParameter(BaseParameter.Kuunganisha, uongo);
            query.SetParameter(BaseParameter.NAVIGATION, kweli);
            query.SetParameter(BaseParameter.NAVIGATION_DEEPHITS, 100);

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

            IQueryResult matokeo = searchView.Search(swala);

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

            int docCounter = 0;

            wakati (docCounter < result.DocCount)
            {

                docCounter    ;

                IDocumentSummary thisDocSummary = result.GetDocument(docCounter);

                Kuwafariji.WriteLine("[" + docCounter + "]: " + thisDocSummary.GetSummaryField("url").Kamba Thamani);

            } // wakati

            Kuwafariji.ReadLine();
            #endregion

        }
    }
}

Inazalisha matokeo yafuatayo:

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Hapa ni baadhi ya kanuni kwamba inaonyesha maoni yote inapatikana kutoka FAST server msingi aitwaye QRServer (mchakato server ambayo sisi kuwasiliana). I offer this up to give you all a taste of what it’s like to use the provided FAST API.

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


namespace Conchango
{
    darasani EnumerateFASTViews
    {
        tuli utupu Kuu(string[] args)
        {

            ISearchFactory searchFactory;

            NameValueCollection nameValueCollection = mpya 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);

            Kuwafariji.WriteLine("Total Views: [" + searchFactory.GetSearchViewList().Hesabu + "].");

            int i = 0;

            foreach (kitu the katika searchFactory.GetSearchViewList())
            {
                Kuwafariji.WriteLine("View [" + i     + "]: [" + o.ToString() + "].");

            }

            Kuwafariji.ReadLine();

        }
    }
}

Kumbuka kwamba mimi mwenyewe kufikiria vigumu husika C # programu na mimi kuwa na ngozi nyembamba, hivyo si kutuma yoyote raspberries njia yangu, hasa re: the "foreach (kitu na …)" construct 🙂

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Nimekuwa na bahati ya kuwa na nafasi ya kazi ya FAST <–> SharePoint ushirikiano wa mradi na nilifikiri d kuendelea kushiriki uzoefu wangu mdogo kwa jamii ya.

Microsoft ni katika mchakato wa ununuzi wa FAST. I don’t know anything about the schedule except that it should be finished in the "2nd quarter" ambayo mimi kudhani njia 06/30/08.

Mradi wangu wa kubuni, katika ngazi ya juu sana, wito kwa ajili ya kujenga sehemu ya mtandao chache ambazo zina takribani kuangalia huo, kujisikia na utendaji kama kiwango sanduku MOSS tafuta na msingi matokeo ya mtandao sehemu, 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, ingawa ni dhahiri kwangu kwamba baadhi ya wahandisi FAST kuelewa wazi MS tech (au wameweza alifanya matumizi ya makandarasi).

FAST:

FAST ni kubwa monster server bidhaa (na mimi si maana kwamba katika mtazamo mbaya; Moss ni kubwa monster bidhaa kwangu pia). 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, inaonyesha matokeo, ni kubwa juu ya relevancy (ingawa mimi si kuona jinsi Hushughulikia relevancy kijamii). Hata hivyo, 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, kama mimi kujifunza zaidi.

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.

Inaonekana kuna huduma ya mtandao interface pamoja.

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, hana uhakika kama ni uzalishaji-tayari.

That’s it for now. As I progress through the project, Mimi itabidi baada ya zaidi.

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Ili kuwasiliana na Tafuta FAST kupitia API yake, tunahitaji kujua bandari ambayo QRServer ni mbio.

Mimi ikifuatiwa hatua hizi kwa Machapisho hayo:

1. Kuingia katika tovuti FAST admin (http://server:port/admin).
2. Nenda kwenye Overview System.
3. Locate "Search Dispatcher" na bonyeza icon spyglass:

   

4. Mimi mafanikio kutumika thamani, 15100 for "Info Name" = "http":

   

Maelezo:

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

2. Kutumia hii kanuni sawa na yafuatayo instantiate uhusiano na FAST:

 ISearchFactory searchFactory;

    NameValueCollection nameValueCollection = mpya 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. Kama pick bandari wildly sahihi, kupata msaada makosa ujumbe:

4. Hata hivyo, kama wewe kuchukua idadi bandari waliotajwa kwenye maelezo ya (15102) you don’t get that helpful error message. Badala yake, baadaye wakati wewe kujaribu kupata data yoyote kupitia kutafuta au rejea maoni 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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