SharePoint 2007: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 27. Using SharePoint Server for Search

Introduction

In previous chapters, we went through installation of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) multiserver farm, as well as basic usage scenarios of a majority of the MOSS features. Installation and configuration of Search, even for simple use of out-of-the-box features, is very important to the overall health of your MOSS farm, as well as the health of your end users' search results.

Search in MOSS 2007 offers many significant improvements over SharePoint Portal 2003, and starting with the Office 2007 release, it is also available as a standalone product. Simply speaking, Search is an increasingly important tool for the end users as more and more data is stored in repositories that are indexed by the MOSS Search. But why is it important to an end user? Consider, for instance, as an end user, a task of finding a document stored either on a local computer or somewhere on a corporate file share. Finding the document in the first scenario may take up some time, depending on the user's personal folder organization or use of some desktop search, but the second scenario may literally take hours. This is where the Search part of MOSS steps in. MOSS Search is one of the tools that will allow you to do such a search, and not only will it index data in MOSS sites, but, among other data sources, it will also index websites, file shares, Microsoft Exchange, and with additional work, many other line of business applications ...