Search Components Online

Free search web part from SurfRay

SurfRay, long known for its Ontolica enterprise search product, has released a free search web part that can be downloaded from their site.

The web part adds four of the most commonly used actions to search results from both SharePoint 2010 search and for FAST Search for SharePoint. The user has direct access to a pull down that provides the ability to forward a document via email, to add a search results to My Links, to view the document properties, orto  open the document location.

There are alot of web parts out there, but this one is certainly a keeper for anyone who uses SharePoint for search.

 

Solr and PHP-based Enterprise Search

If you're interested in search technology (why else are you reading this blog?), you may like the post we discovered over at IBM developerWorks. Author Martin Streicher of McClatchy Interactive wrote the article (and the code) Enterprise search with PHP and Apache Solr, which describes how to create a search application.

The article does a great job of leading you step-by-step through what you need to do - everything from installing and configuring Solr, defining some sample data, and the PHP source code to run queries against your Solr collection.

Maybe not 'enterprise' search - before you really can use the apps to search your own content, you need to get it into Solr, which means SMPO - a small matter of programming. But at least this article gives you a head start, some templates you can use to model your app, and great sample code.

Pretty cool stuff for your own search playground. You *are* a search geek, right?

 

Products you'd like to see us review? Have questions about an article? Tell us what you think - leave a comment.

 

A C# API to access Google Search Appliance

We often run into companies that have standardized on Visual Studio for in-house development. When one of those companies brings in a Google Search Appliance, they often want to integrated GSA results from C# ('C Sharp') applications.

MC+A is an open source project at Codeplex that accesses GSA results using the Google Enterprise XML search protocol.  The download is a VS2008 'solution' that converts when loaded into VS2010, and includes the source code to 3 projects: a VB app to configure the system; the library for GSA calls, and a test/sample application.

You start by editing the web.config file to define the URL/IP address of your GSA; or you can use the provided VB application to set it up for you. The second project, GA, includes all of the .cs files and utilities for accessing the GSA; and the third is a test application for verifying success.

It's a very cool tool for fetching GSA and Google Mini results for display within a Visual Studio application; give it as try and let us know how it worked for you!

 

 

SharePoint 2010: Changing Web Parts look and feel

Do you wish you could easily change the look and feel of SharePoint 2010 visual web parts? People new to SharePoint are sometimes surprised to learn that it's relatively easy to change the look and feel of just about any visual web part using industry-standard tools including CSS and XSL/XSLT.

SharePoint Search XSL Samples is a project that serves as a repository of sample XSL

If you want to customize the way your search results look in SharePoint 2010, you'll find some good documetnation and sample files over on Microsoft's Codeplex site. The Downloads link page includes a number of Word files that include code listings and tutorials on how to add XLS to SharePoing 2010 web parts to change the look of the search results page. Whiel you'll find examples for SSharePoint (search)  Server, Search serevr 2008 and even Search Server 2008 Express.Sadly, no FS4SP samples - yet. Volunteers?

 

LucidWorks Enterprise Search Platform

Solr is perhaps one of the best enterprise search platforms on the market today, and the company that  makes it their business to keep Solr going and growing is Lucid Imagination. They have bundled together Lucene/Solr along with some very useful tools including an admin console identify and crawl content; a query parser tuned for enterprise queries; user agents that automatically execute stored user queries over new or changed content; and click scoring, so popular results migrate to the top of the result list. The package has much more, and comes under license that includes full support from Lucid.

If you are wondering about open source for your search needs and don't want to bother of assembling pieces of the puzzle from all over the internet, Lucid may have the right product for you.

 

Another cool SharePoint query tool

MOSSMAN strikes again! Ben Novak over at JP Morgan Chase has published a cool query tool on Codeplex. FAST Search for SharePoint MOSS 2010 Query Tool is a program that lets developers test queries for either FS4SP or for Search Server 2010 test queries and experiment with FAST Query Language (FQL) and keywords and SQL search for SP Search Server/MOSS.

The tool lets you see what your results will look like before you hard-code your query algorithm for your site. It also lets you see the impact refiners will have, and gives you a feel for the results your users will see once you go live. Looks pretty cool!

Thanks for the heads up over at LinkedIn's Enterprise Search Professional Group.

/s/Miles

FAST for SharePoint query logger

 From Norway, former Comperio developer, now at Puzzlepart, newly minted SharePoint MVP Mikael Svenson has added a cool little utility to Microsoft's CodePlex. FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 Query Logger captures queries into FS4SP and captures them into an XML format by working with the QR server; and helps a developer figure out what FS4SP has done to expand the query.

If you're one of those who would look at query results in FAST ESP by connecting to port 15100, this tool might be for you. As he says, it doesn't respect security, talks directly to the QR server, and must be installed on the QR Server system. It's not going to be real quick for high performance sites, so it is not for production. But it's a great tool when you're testing FQL and FAST results at a low level.

Search big data: HSearch

If you have huge data and need the power and scalability of Hadoop, NoSQL, and an Apache open source  license - not to mention a free download - then you need to look at HSearch from Bizosys. They have what appears to be a well-designed architecture that seems to scale well. It supports structured and unstructured data sources, claims to have social media integration - a 'must have' fad for search these days, and supports a document security model. We don't see much about office documents; but perhaps with so much content in CRM, CMS, and email nowadays, that won't be a big matter.

If you've had experience with HSearch and want to share it, let us know!

s/Miles

July 4, 2011

Diagnose your own Search Problems with a genuine Dr. Search Mug

The lovable and informative Dr. Search has gone all Hollywood now with a line of mugs and mouse pads.  Perfect for that busy SCOE team lead.

Open Source Word Lists

http://wordlist.sourceforge.net

Including variations for spelling correction, inflection, British vs. American English, parts of speech, jargon and the "12 dictionaries" package.