Searching Database Content with Fast Search for SharePoint 2010 – Part 1
The search story is much better in 2010 for SharePoint. There’s a new Search Engine available deploy with SharePoint Server 2010 – FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 (FS4SP). I really could have used FAST Search for SharePoint in my past Enterprise SharePoint Search projects. It produces significantly better relevant results than the MOSS 2007 search engine. It has many more options available for tweaking the search UI and search engine. It also has better options available for developers developing and extending custom search solutions.
Why is this quality search engine now available to deploy with SharePoint? Microsoft acquired FAST Search & Transfer and its FAST ESP product for $US 1.2 Billion in early 2008. This is a common Microsoft approach at getting ahead in a market, acquire an innovative company with a quality product. The same happened with MCMS 2002 (the forerunner to SharePoint WCM) which was based on a product gained from the NCompass Labs acquisition.
Microsoft Announces Offer to Acquire Fast Search & Transfer.
Microsoft Completes Tender Offer for FAST Search & Transfer
Artistitic re-enactment of the acquisition.
Since the FAST acquisition, Microsoft has had the time to bake in a version of FAST ESP into the next version of SharePoint, and it’s time to make use of this awesome new enhancement to the platform.
Options for Searching Database Content with FAST Search for SharePoint 2010
So you want to search custom SQL Server databases using FAST?
If you have never indexed anything other than SharePoint Sites with FS4SP, I recommend first checking out this page on TechNet:
Plan and design for content collection (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint)
It gives a great summary of the options available to you, and links to further TechNet pages containing step-by-step details on connecting FAST to File Shares, Exchange, People Profiles, Web sites, Lotus Notes and more.
This page on TechNet lists two options for using FS4SP to crawl and search databases:
Business Data Catalog-based indexing connectors
- Use if the preferred configuration method is using the Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010.
- Use when you want to use time stamp based change detection for incremental database crawls.
- Use when the preferred operation method is using the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Central Administration.
- Use when you want to enable crawling based on the change log. This can be achieved by directly modifying the connector model file and creating a stored procedure in the database.
FAST Search database connector
- Use when the preferred configuration method is using SQL queries.
- Use when you want advanced data joining operation options through SQL queries.
- Use when you want to use advanced incremental update features. FAST Search database connector uses checksum based change detection for incremental crawls if there is no update information available. The connector also supports time stamp based change detection and change detection based on update and delete flags.
That’s right, you’ve got not just one, but two approaches that you can use with FAST Search for SharePoint to make this possible. Why are there two ways to do this?
The preferred method of integrating database content and LOB systems with SharePoint 2010 is using the BCS. You can also use the BCS to crawl databases to use in SharePoint 2010 Search and FS4SP. It also provides extra goodies for use in SharePoint such as external lists. It also provides a nicer user interface to get the job done.
The second option available to use is a port of the FAST ESP JDBC database connector. FAST ESP had to have a way to connect to databases before a port of FAST ESP was implemented in SharePoint, it had the JDBC connector. In comparison to the BCS, the JDBC connector doesn’t have as nice a gui to setup the connection and crawling. It also requires installation of the 32 bit Java JRE, That’s right folks, you need to have a JVM on your FAST server to get the JDBC connector to work! A few other ‘FAST Search specific’ connectors include the web connector and Lotus Notes connector.
More on these 'FAST Search Specific' connectors:
Plan to deploy FAST Search specific connectors (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint)
Part 4 Comparison of the BCS and FAST Search database connector. [stay tuned...]
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