Microsoft Search Server (MSS) is an enterprise search platform
from Microsoft, based on the search capabilities of Microsoft
Office SharePoint Server. MSS shares its architectural
underpinnings with the Windows Search platform for both the
querying engine as well as the indexer. Microsoft Search Server was
once known as SharePoint Server for Search
Microsoft Search Server has been made available as Search Server
2008, which has been released in the first half of 2008.
A free version, Search Server Express 2008 is also available.
The express edition will feature the same feature-set as the
commercial edition, including no limitation on the number of files
indexed; however, it is limited to a stand-alone installation and
cannot be scaled out to a cluster. A release candidate of Search
Server Express 2008 was made available on November 7, 2007; it is
scheduled to RTM in sync with Search Server 2008.
MSS presents a search center interface to present the UI for
querying. The interface is available as a web application, accessed
using a browser. The query can either be a simple query, or use
advanced operators as defined by the AQS syntax. The matched files
are listed along with a snippet from the file, with the search
terms highlighted, sorted by relevance. The relevance determination
algorithm has been developed by Microsoft Research and Windows Live
Search.
MSS also shows definitions of the search terms, where applicable,
as well as suggests corrections for misspelled terms. Duplicate
results are collapsed together. Alerts can be set for specific
queries, where the user is informed of changes to the results of a
query via email or RSS. The search center UI uses the ASP.NET web
part infrastructure and can be customized using either Microsoft
Visual Studio or Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer. Custom
actions can be defined on a per-filetype basis as well.
MSS can index any data source as long as a indexing connector
for the data source is provided. The indexing connector includes
protocol handlers, metadata handlers and iFilters to enumerate the
data items in the source and extract metadata from the items in the
data source. If the file type in the source has a corresponding
iFilter, then it is used to extract the text of the file for full
text indexing as well. The handlers and iFilters MSS uses are the
same as used by SharePoint, Microsoft SQL Server and Windows Search
as well. The data sources that are to be indexed are identified by
their URIs and have to be configured prior to indexing. The indexer
updates the search index as soon as an item is indexed (continuous
propagation) so that the items can be queried against even before
the indexing crawl is complete. MSS can also federate searches to
other search services (including SharePoint and web search servers)
that support the OpenSearch protocol. Federated locations can be
serialized to a .fld file.
The administration UI, which is also presented as a web
application, can be used to review statistics such as most frequent
queries, top destination hits, click through rates etc, as well as
fine tune relevancy settings, indexing policies (including
inclusion and exclusion filters) and schedules, and set up a
cluster of the servers. It can also be used to back up either the
configuration state or the search indices. ACLs can also be defined
to limit the search result according to the rights of the user
initiating the query.