Enterprise Search Architecture & Configuration - Part 3

Configuration & Administration
I have explained Enterprise search architecture, its component, processes and server roles in Part1 and Part2.In this article we will see what are the configurations and administrations settings are available for a MOSS administrator.
The tasks available for configuration and administration of indexing services and query services are-

• Configuring Crawl Process Following configurations available for Indexing(Crawl) Services.
  • Content Sources-Manage Content Sources for search
    • Content source is a specification of a protocol handler with at least one start address
    • An Administrator can configure up to 500 content per shared service provider and up to 500 start address are possible per content source.
  • Crawl SchedulesAn Administrator can configure a schdule for crawling of content sources.Crawling can be of two type-
    • Full crawl -
      • Re crawl existing documents and new documents
      • Update crawl behaviours based on configuration changes
    • Incremental crawl - only crawl new or modified content
  • Crawl RulesAn Administrator can also set some rules for crawling process.
    • Address can be pattern matched for special treatment
    • Support altering the authentication mechanism
    • Support exclusion rules and inclusion rules
    • Support crawling sharepoint sites as http pages


• Crawl Administration
  • Managing file type & ifilters
    • protocol handlers load ifilters based on configuration setting
    • file types and ifilter mapping managed at the SSP level
    • Modify the DOCICON.xml (in c://.../12/TEMPLATE/XML folder )file to display appropriate icons in search results
  • Managed Properties
    • E.g. Managed Property( Customer )-> Crawled Property(Client for Sharepoint content and Cust for BDC content)
    • Maneged Properties used in - Scope Defination, Advanced search webpart,keyword query syntax
  • Server Name Mapping - Override how search results are displayed. hide file path file://moss-srv/myshare to http://moss.share.com
  • Content Access Account


• Configuring Query Process
  • Implementing Scopes
    • Scopes are logical view on an index - compiled & efficient
    • Scopes are based on - web address,managed property,content sources
    • Scopes are defined by one or more rules - include,require,exclude
    • can be used throughout the search experience
  • Configuring Advanced Search Property
    • Advance search web part
      -Search term options
      -Managed property options
      
    • Result web part


• People search
  • people search based on indexing user profile properties
  • user profiles can be inported from -
    -Active directory,
    -LDAP Directory,
    -BDC application

<< Part 2 - Search processes and server role involved in Search Architecture
Part 4 - WSS Search Scenarios >>