Advanced Search Solutions for SharePoint Christopher Even BA-Insight

Who is BA-Insight? BA-Insight is a New York based software company focused on Information Access Solutions Voted 2008 Top 100 Company that matter – KMworld. 350,000 users worldwide Scheduled to go public in July of 2008 Flagship Products Longitude Search Longitude Enterprise Connectors Trend Setting Product KMworld Extends SharePoint Search to deliver dramatic improvements in relevance and usability Strong Microsoft Partnership Microsoft Tier I Managed Partner MTC Global Alliance Partner

Searching your Enterprise Systems How do I get SharePoint to index all my systems? How do I guarantee that search results honor security? Four approaches to connect your LOBs Dynamic Web Site – ASP.NET pages that output your LOB content Use the Business Data Catalog available with the ECAL Write your own Protocol Handler Buy a third party connector Enterprise Search is being able to search across all your internal Line Of Business Systems in one interface.

How security works in SharePoint Search Windows based Security – ACLs Index supports native Windows ACLs Scales to millions of items with sub-second return times Requires a translation from source system non-AD to Windows AD model. System User -> AD User System Group -> AD Group Real Time Security Trimmer Security is checked in real time against the source system as the query is run Requires custom coding implementing ISecurityTrimmer May impact performance May impact relevancy

Method 1: Dynamic Web Site Create a dynamic asp.net website that shows the data and lets SharePoint index natively Pros Can use method against most any system, including API based ones. Most programmers can handle task. Supports MSS 2008 Cons No ability to include unstructured data (files) No ability to secure the items. Everyone can search. Create a list webpage i.e. /list.aspx which will just list out all the items to crawl as links Create a detail page which the links point to and output the detailed data.

Method 2: Business Data Catalog Use an IDEnumerator method to enable the BDC to index your data Pros Can use method against most any system, including API based ones (through the webservice interface) No programming required Wizards provided by BDCMetaman and MS assist creating definitions. Provides real time security trimming Cons No ability to include unstructured data (files) Limited to real time security trimming only. Not scalable. Requires additional License No support for Microsoft Search Server 2008

Method 3: Write a custom Protocol Handler Implement iSearchProtocol interface and extend the MS Indexer directly Pros No limits to types of systems you integrate Allows you to support files (unstructured data) Allows you to support windows ACL type security Can scale if done right Supports MSS 2008 Cons Requires expert programming Many undocumented “features” to be aware of. To support real time security trimming another interface must be implemented. See my blog on sharepointsearch.com for a good starting point.

Method 4: Buy a third party connector Check with your vendor to see if they offer one BA-Insight has connectors for Documentum Lotus Notes MS Exchange Mailboxes Opentext / Hummingbird Interwoven WorkSite Universal SQL/OLEDB/WebServices connectors Coming Soon: MS CRM, Salesforce.com, BEA Aqualogic, Symantec Enteprises Vault

Demo of Longitude Products Questions More info in general on SharePoint search at sharepointsearch.com More info on the Longitude Products at ba-insight.net