Special Edition Using Microsoft® SharePoint Portal Server

Building the Index

Obviously, when dealing with documents that may reside in different places, it saves time to have a local copy of the data contained in these documents to search. This data originates from different document formats, such as Microsoft Word or HTML. Storing this data in a common, optimized format will further improve the times necessary to search. This local copy is called an index, which in effect is a database optimized for searching textual information. Such a copy of data, though, will create new challenges in terms of keeping the indexed information up to date and accurate.

→ For more information on the algorithms and approaches used to overcome the challenges of indexing, see “Keeping the Index Up to Date,” p. 497.

NOTE ...