Learning Windows Server 2003

Chapter 13. Other Windows Server 2003 Services

Throughout the previous chapters of this book, I covered the bundled services most commonly used with Windows Server 2003. In this chapter, I’ll review two more that are also popular: the Indexing Service and the Microsoft Message Queue. Then, I’ll provide a brief, high-level overview of other applications and services from Microsoft, called “feature packs,” that are not bundled with the product but might offer some value to your organization.

The Indexing Service

Windows Server 2003 includes version 3.0 of the Indexing Service that catalogs files stored on network drives, corporate intranets, and Internet sites, and provides a web-based query form for easy search and retrieval of those cataloged resources. The service is part of Internet Information Services (see Chapter 8 for a complete and detailed walkthrough of IIS).

Part of the power behind the Indexing Service is its ability to catalog documents without needing them reformatted to a special, proprietary format. The service understands most Microsoft Office file formats, including Word and Excel documents. This makes the service very useful, even beyond its basic premise of indexing plain web sites.

The Indexing Service works by identifying unique words within a document and establishing its location with that document, and then reporting that information back to a central database—the “index,” as it were. You, as the administrator, can specify certain documents to either be indexed ...