Microsoft Enterprise Search Blog : Express

Search Server 2008 Express Redistribution Rights

enterprisesearch — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 02:26:27 GMT

If you’re interested in using Search Server 2008 Express in your application or shipping it on hardware then take a look at the redistribution license page on the Enterprise Search site.

This redistribution license agreement grants you the right to redistribute Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express with your software application or hardware.

To obtain a Search Server 2008 Express redistribution license, you must:

Review the Search Server 2008 Express Redistribution End-User License Agreement (EULA).
Print and retain a copy of the Search Server 2008 Express Redistribution EULA for your records.
Register for Search Server 2008 Express redistribution rights.

The license is applicable for all 37 Search Server 2008 Express languages.

Announcing Faceted Search v2.5

enterprisesearch — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:50:22 GMT

Starting Faceted Search 2.5, the solution relies on Microsoft Enterprise Library to address common software requirements in caching, logging, exception handling, policy injection etc., etc. More importantly, the 2.5 is a ground breaking release that is setting new targets for the Faceted Search. So, what’s new?

New Features

1. Caching – dramatically improves performance and decreases the load on the search engine

The solution uses 2 mechanisms for manageable cache: quick and long. I built the caching logic on assumption that user knows what he/she is looking for. The Search Facets web part will cache original result set and use it for the search refinement, paging and other postbacks. If the initial result set doesn’t provide full coverage of the search, the smart 2^nd thread will run against real-time data providing adjustment to the cached match.

2. Synchronization with Core Search Results web part

The MOSS search is adjusted by several parameters that designer can set for the Core Search Results web part itself. These include remove duplicates, enable trimming, permit noise words. When you drop the Search Facets web part to the search results page, it will find the Core Search Results, read its parameters and sync the search query parameters to exactly match ones used by the Core.

3. Support for advanced search

It was the most wanted feature since Faceted Search 1.0. With 2.5, the Facets are rendered for advanced search although do not extend yet to ranges. The functionality is accomplished by extending SearchQuery structure to accommodate POST requests and sync back to GET query.

4. Match of search counters

This release introduced an updated search syntax that is design to provide matching counters to the core search. In fact, the new search query is using both KeywordQuery and FullTextQuery through the use of generics.

public class GenericQuery<T> : IDisposable where T : Query
{
    private EventHandler _customLogic;

    public ResultTableCollection Execute(EventArgs args)
    {
        _customLogic(_query, args);
        return _query.Execute();
    }

    ...
}

Additionally, the WHERE clause of the search query was modified to provide closer match to the Core counter.

5. Introducing Parent-Child relationships

By design, the facets can support only 2 levels. This release extended the Facets schema to allow management of the nested layers. That eases the pain of displaying complex hierarchies such as geography, or org chart etc. Parent-Child relationship can be set by facet name and facet value, or just by facet name.

<Column Name="BDCCity" DisplayName="City" ParentName="BDCState" />
<Column Name="BDCState" DisplayName="State" >
  <Mappings>
    <Mapping Match="Alberta"  ParentName="BDCCountry" ParentValue="Canada"/>    
    <Mapping Match="Manitoba" ParentName="BDCCountry" ParentValue="Canada" />
    <Mapping Match="Ontario"  ParentName="BDCCountry" ParentValue="Canada"/>
    <Mapping Match="Quebec"   ParentName="BDCCountry" ParentValue="Canada"/>
  </Mappings>
</Column>

In the configuration above, the City facets will display only after the user chose the State. The State itself will match the country of origin.

6. Extending search to logical “OR” queries

Original facets always represent “AND” queries. That implies ability to narrow the search results by adding extra criteria. In this release I prototyped the way to expand the search by adding additional matches to the criteris. This in fact resulted in rewamped the Bread Crumbs UI. Proviuded now out-of-the-box support for languages is a good example of how “OR” queries empower the search.

7. Simplified web part properties

The 2.5 release is friendly to modifications of the web part properties. I have all properties classified and broken down to groups for each of the web parts.

8. Other

There are lots and lots of numerous fixes and enhancements, including improved security validation, code refactoring, extending facet sorting, support of quoted search and duplicates etc., etc.

What’s next

It’s my privilege to say that we have a team now that helps to shape new releases and brainstorm the furutre of the Faceted Search. In present we are looking at AJAX and SilverLight and hopefully you’ll start seeing more and more power of Facets in the near future.

Leonid Lyublinski
Senior Consultant
Microsoft Consultancy Services

Announcing: Availability of Infrastructure Updates

enterprisesearch — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:08:13 GMT

As announced on the SharePoint Team blog this morning we released to web three new important updates that affect SharePoint Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Project Server 2007, Search Server 2008, Search Server 2008 Express and Project Professional 2007.

The Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) (Download X86, Download X64) is particularly important from a Search and SharePoint Server 2007 perspective as it contains the new Enterprise Search features that were shipped in Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express that were are not already in SharePoint Server 2007; this includes Federated Search capability, a unified administration dashboard and several Search core platform performance updates.

For an overview of the new federation features please check out this short video which covers how to configure a federated location and configure one of the new federated search Web Parts to show results from that location.

There’s also a growing number of articles on TechNet and MSDN that cover configuring and troubleshooting federation and extending federation with Federated Search Connectors.

The screen capture below shows how federated search results show up on a results page – the results on the right hand side and top left are federated results, the ones at the bottom left are from the local index.

The new Search Administration Dashboard consolidates all of the Search related admin activities into a single place – there’s also some new functionality in the dashboard (There’s greater granularity for content source crawl history and a convenient list that shows currently running crawls and durations for example) and it makes the Search Administrators job much easier by keeping everything close at hand.

The UI looks like the screen capture below:

The update leaves the old Search admin pages intact, the links to them stay in Central Admin (Along with a new link to the new dashboard) so if you’ve made any changes to them or just prefer to use the existing admin pages you’re free to do so.

The other changes are all under the hood and improve Index and Query performance as well as fixing a few bugs. Check out the KB articles below for more details.

Description of the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)

Fixes Included in the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB953750)

Please read this post on the SharePoint Team blog and the installation instructions thoroughly before you install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) and the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) on SharePoint Server 2007 or Search Server 2008.

Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Office SharePoint Server 2007)

Install the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (Search Server 2008)

Finally, if you’re wondering why the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) and the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) applies to Search Server 2008 then you’re probably not alone!

There’s a very good reason for both – Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express are built on the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 platform (hence the need for the Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695)) and secondly the Search features are from SharePoint Server 2007 (hence the need for the Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297)). The latter update includes a few bug fixes since Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express launched.

We strongly recommend that you install the updates that apply to you as soon as your patching and maintenance schedules permit.

Richard Riley
Senior Technical Product Manager
Microsoft Corp.

Indexing Exchange Server 2007 Public Folders

enterprisesearch — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 03:56:42 GMT

I've had several questions recently about how to index Exchange Server 2007 Public Folders with SharePoint Server 2007.

Unfortunately with the RTM versions of both products it's not actually possible due a couple of issues with both Exchange Server 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007.

The good news however, is that everything is back in working order if you install Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 *and* your SharePoint Server also has Service Pack 1 installed.

The RTM versions of Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express are unaffected (As they already include the Service Pack 1 changes), so providing Exchange Server 2007 has Service Pack 1 installed they will both work.

None of this affects Exchange Server 2003 which works with the RTM versions SharePoint Server 2007, Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express and SharePoint Server 2007 with SP1.

Hopefully this stops people scratching their heads...

Richard Riley
Senior Technical Product Manager
Microsoft Corp.

Introducing Protocol Handler.NET

enterprisesearch — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:13:27 GMT

"Protocol Handler.Net is a set of .Net wrappers for the protocol handler interfaces that enable developers to create and deploy protocol handlers for SharePoint search and Search Server.

Developers can index data and documents from any system they can connect to.

Much of the complexity and time around the development of protocol handlers, such as COM interoperability, are reduced and hidden in the wrappers themselves letting developers just concentrate on code to connect to a content source and pull data.

Protocol Handler.Net makes it possible to develop protocol handlers in C# or VB.Net and simplifies the handling of security, metadata, streaming content, deployment and management just to name a few things. It also comes with a help system and sample project to further help developers."

Big thank you to to Chris Gomez from http://www.FastSharePoint.com for creating and sharing these tools and samples!

They are available now on CodePlex at http://www.codeplex.com/phdotnet and are part of the Search Community Toolkit

Announcing: Release to Web of Documentum and FileNet Indexing Connectors

enterprisesearch — Wed, 28 May 2008 03:45:46 GMT

Today marks the release of 2 new Microsoft Enterprise Search Indexing Connectors (formally known as Protocol Handlers) for EMC Documentum 5.3 (Service Pack 4) and IBM FileNet P8 3.5.1 or 3.5.2.

The connectors are compatible with the 32bit English Language versions of SharePoint Server 2007 (Service Pack 1), Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express, and are available as FREE downloads from;

Enterprise Search Indexing Connector 2008 for EMC Documentum

Enterprise Search Indexing Connector 2008 for IBM FileNet

Installation and configuration documentation is included in the download and the release notes are available here;

Release Notes for Indexing Connector 2008 for EMC Documentum

Release Notes for Indexing Connector 2008 for IBM FileNet

A couple of overview videos to get you up and running with the connectors quickly are available through the links below;

Overview Video - Installing and configuring the EMC Documentum Connector

Overview Video - Installing and configuring the IBM FileNet Connector

Both of these connectors are fully supported through your existing service contract with Product Support Services or through the regular pay per incident channel.

Introducing the ExportCrawlLog STSADM Command Extension

enterprisesearch — Tue, 27 May 2008 06:46:21 GMT

In versions of SharePoint prior to MOSS 2007 each time a crawl was executed, a new group of log messages were stored to the database. Also, the name of the log itself was changed in the documentation and the user interface. Formerly this log was known as the Gatherer Log, but it is now called the Crawl Log.

When troubleshooting problems with the crawl of a particular content source it was (and still is) sometimes useful to compare and contrast the messages logged between one crawl and the next. In MOSS 2007, the storage of the crawl log messages has been optimized/minimized such that only the most recent message for a given URL is stored in the database. As a consequence, the results from a prior crawl are overwritten by results from subsequent crawls. In other words, you can only ever see the most recent log message for a given URL.

This is where the STSADM command extension “ExportCrawlLog” comes in. The motivation for preparing this tool is to provide a way to make a “snapshot” of the Crawl Log information at a point in time to facilitate post-mortem analysis of crawl problems. As a bonus, in addition to extracting crawl log detail, it also provides some summary reporting features. The goal of the tool is to provide a means of gathering data by which you can track and manage the health of your index over time. For instance you could setup a scheduled task to run this command once a day and generate summary reports that can provide data for trend monitoring.

ExportCrawlLog uses only the published APIs of the SharePoint Object Model and must be run on the index server of your SharePoint Farm. ExportCrawlLog is available as source code on Codeplex at http://www.codeplex.com/ExportCrawlLog and is part of the Search Community Toolkit.

Please use the Discussion tracking and Issue tracking features of Codeplex to offer your feedback.

Larry Kuhn
Architect
Microsoft Consulting Services.

Understanding Total Hits & Paging in the MOSS 2007 Search API

enterprisesearch — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:45:06 GMT

One of the more discussed topics I’ve seen (and struggled with myself) is around the concept of obtaining the total number of hits in a search results when working with the MOSS API. For instance, when I search for “sales forecast” in my SharePoint site, I want to not only see a set of paged results, 10 hits per page, but also see that my search found 127 matches. Those of you who’ve worked with the SharePoint Search Web Parts know this is a piece of cake using the Search Core Results, Search Paging and Search Statistics Web Parts.

But what if you need to roll your own solution? How can you get the same data out of your search query using the MOSS 2007 Search API? At first this can be a bit tricky but this post will hopefully show you how to knock it down to being a trivial task.

Executing a search query against the SharePoint API has you working with two objects that implement the abstract class Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query.Query: Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query.KeywordQuery and Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query.FullTextSqlQuery. The former KeywordQuery is useful for simple queries whereas the latter FullTextSqlQuery is much more powerful. Both implement the Execute() method which executes the defined query and returns back a collection of results as type Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query.ResultTableCollection. Using this object, you can get the specific results you are interested in. For instance to get the relevant results use the following to get an instance of a specific Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Query.ResultTable:

using (FullTextSqlQuery query = new FullTextSqlQuery(SPContext.Current.Site))

{

query.QueryText = "SELECT Rank, Title Url FROM Scope() WHERE FREETEXT(defaultproperties,'sales proposal') ORDER BY Rank Desc",

ResultTableCollection results = query.Execute();

ResultTable relevantResults = results[ResultType.RelevantResults];

// do work with the results

}

Simple enough, but the project requires much more than that as usual. What we need to do is page the results to show only 15 items per page. No problem… let’s just modify that query a bit to set the Query.StartRow & Query.RowLimit properties of the query to say what page we’re on and tell SharePoint how many results we want to get back. Take for instance if we’re on page 2 of the results… we want to start with the 16^th hit as 1-15 were on page 1:

using (FullTextSqlQuery query = new FullTextSqlQuery(SPContext.Current.Site))

{

query.StartRow = 16;

query.RowLimit = 15;

query.QueryText = "SELECT Rank, Title Url FROM Scope() WHERE FREETEXT(defaultproperties,'sales proposal') ORDER BY Rank Desc",

ResultTableCollection results = query.Execute();

ResultTable relevantResults = results[ResultType.RelevantResults];

// do work with the results

}

Again… pretty straight forward. Now is where it gets a bit tricky. You need to show links to provide paging… but in order to do that you need a good idea what the total reset set of your search query because if there were only 43 hits, you don’t want to shot options to jump to page 9. The property that gives you the number you’re looking for is ResultTable.TotalResults. Now there’s something special about this guy: he doesn’t give you an exact number… he gives you an estimate. Why an estimate? Quite simply, with all the security trimming and other complex logic inherit to search algorithms, it’s just too expensive to get a specific number. Sites like Live.com can do this because they don’t have to concern themselves with the security trimming of hits.

But this is not all… there’s another property you should pay attention to: Query.TotalRowsExactMinimum. This property tells SharePoint this is the minimum number of hits to be included in the search. It’s used to generate the estimate of total results. Think of it like a hint to search… saying “you only have to work this hard on this query.” Most search implementations only show the next few paging options… they don’t show ALL the options. For instance, if you’re on page 5, your paging control may show the following:

«Previous« 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 »Next»

In this case, you don’t need for search to find ALL the results… you only need it to determine how many more page options you want to show to see if you’re going to show too many or too few. In the above example, you have an additional 3 pages of results you want to show. Continuing on this example, you have a result set of 15 and you have an additional 3 pages you want to show, the Query.TotalResultsExactMinimum property would be 45 as it already is going to factor into the equation the Query.StartRow property:

using (FullTextSqlQuery query = new FullTextSqlQuery(SPContext.Current.Site))

{

query.StartRow = 16;

query.RowLimit = 15;

// TotalRowsExactMinimum = [number of pages to show] * [page size]

query.TotalRowsExactMinimum = 45;

query.QueryText = "SELECT Rank, Title Url FROM Scope() WHERE FREETEXT(defaultproperties,'sales proposal') ORDER BY Rank Desc",

ResultTableCollection results = query.Execute();

ResultTable relevantResults = results[ResultType.RelevantResults];

// do work with the results

}

That’s all there really is to it! One parting word of advice: use the Query.TotalRowsExactMinimum property with care as the higher its set, the greater performance impact there will be on each search query executed.

A special shout out & thanks to Puneet Narula @ Microsoft for helping uncover this very helpful nugget of info.

Andrew Connell (blog)
Microsoft MVP

Crawling Novell Netware with SharePoint Server 2007 and Search Server 2008

enterprisesearch — Tue, 13 May 2008 01:07:03 GMT

Search in SharePoint Server 2007 and Search Server 2008 can crawl a variety of content sources. For several of the “out of the box” content sources security information in the form of ACLs are collected as part of the indexing process. At query time, search results are trimmed based on the identity of the user submitting the query, and the ACLs collected from crawling.

In certain scenarios, the built-in security trimming is not sufficient for your requirements or the indexing connector isn’t able to collect ACLs at crawl time - in this scenario you'll need to implement a Custom Security Trimmer. For example, content in Novell Netware file shares can be crawled by SharePoint Server 2007 & Search Server 2008(Using the built-in Fileshare Indexing Connector along with Windows Services for Netware) but the indexing connector doesn’t know how to collect ACLs from Netware.

For security trimmed results, that scenario will require a custom security trimmer (CST) to be developed. We recently released a Novell Netware CST on CodePlex as part of the Search Community Toolkit. This can be installed and configured in less than 30 minutes and has been tested against Netware 6.5 although it should work with earlier versions too. It's compatible with SharePoint Server 2007, Search Server 2008, and Search Server 2008 Express.

It includes documentation on how to configure a content source to crawl Netware and how to install the CST. We’ll post the source code for the CST soon once we’ve finished some final testing and the code will be commented and include a doc that provides an overview of the structure of the code and explains where you might want to make your own modifications. This will be great example of how to build your own CST if you’re looking for a good sample to start from.

The initial version was released with an open source license at http://www.codeplex.com/sctcstn and includes the following features:

Netware Custom Security Trimmer Binaries
Documentation Providing Click Through Guidance

For Crawling Netware Content
For Installing the Binaries
For Security Trimming Netware Results

Semi-Automated Installation In Under 30 minutes
Forms Authentication Support
64 bit Platform Support

Mitch Prince
Architect
Microsoft

John Kelly
Consultant
Microsoft

Search Server Express Heroes - Tell Your Story!

enterprisesearch — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:13:53 GMT

Search Server 2008 Express has only been available for a month now, and we have already been hearing stories from customers about how it has helped them deliver value to their organization -- in many cases in unexpected ways that became a great hero opportunity for IT. We would really like to share your stories on our website to help others understand how search can help them...

Have you used Search Server Express to change the way your organization uses search to find information? Can your co-workers uncover the information they need on the company intranet faster than before? Do your customers now locate products and services from public facing websites quickly and easily? If so, tell us your story!

Visit here to briefly tell us how and why you implemented Search Server Express at your organization as well as the feedback you received from your co-workers and customers. Partners, you can submit your customer stories here as well, and we will include your name in the entries. We will post selected stories on the www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch website this month!

Rhett Dillingham
Senior Product Manager
Microsoft Corp

Search Community Toolkit

enterprisesearch — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:15:33 GMT

Last week at the SharePoint Conference we announced the Search Community Toolkit which is a set of tools, utilities and samples available from CodePlex to extend and enhance the search features in SharePoint Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007 for Search and the recently announced Search Server and Search Server Express.

Some of the tools and utilities have been around for a while and have proved very popular such as Faceted Search and others are brand new. Two new additions are;

Search ASP.NET Server Controls - These 2 controls replicate the Search Box and Core Results Web Parts but as ASP.NET Server Controls bound to the search web service. Using these controls on an ASP.NET web site along with Search Search Express will give you powerful .com site search for FREE! As the search web service is identical between SharePoint Server, SharePoint Server for Search and Search Server these controls are compatible with all 3 products and product versions.

Search Center Branding Tool - This tool installs as a SharePoint Feature and allows you to very easily switch off the SharePoint chrome on the Search Center. The tool is primarily focused on Search Server Express and helps you easily brand a standalone instance of Search Server or just remove the default SharePoint look and feel with a single click.

If you want to get involved, have feedback or ideas for other tools then please feel free to get in touch!

Richard Riley
Senior Technical Product Manager
Microsoft Corp

Delivering on the Promise of Enterprise Search for the Masses

enterprisesearch — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 07:31:00 GMT

Today, I’m very happy to write about our continued momentum in Enterprise Search! At the sold out SharePoint Conference here in Seattle, we're launching Search Server and Search Server Express to deliver on promise of enterprise search for the masses. Coming off the heals of our announcement to acquire Fast Search & Transfer in January, we believe Microsoft is the only vendor that can deliver true enterprise class search capabilities for small and medium sized businesses right up to the largest, most demanding companies in the world.

Search Server Express delivers the familiar search experience your people expect, along with streamlined installation and administration and improved connectivity to your information. We've taken the powerful search features of SharePoint and made them available as a stand-alone server. And by providing this software for free, we’re making enterprise search ubiquitous and available to any company to help them solve the information access needs of their business.

Download Search Server Express today and try it for yourself!

Search Server (available for customers to purchase in April) takes these same features and adds high availability and load balancing across multiple servers. In Q2 of 2008, we'll also release a downloadable feature update which will bring the federation and administration enhancements of Search Server to SharePoint.

We also believe an enterprise search solution should provide you with the flexibility to connect with and find your information, wherever it may be. Our approach to connectivity is to offer both supported and open-standards based solutions to customers.

One of the greatest benefits of this approach is how easy it is for our partners to extend our platform to connect with the content repositories, business systems, and information services you already use. We've re-launched the Search Connector Gallery as the place you can go to find partners who offer search connectors. You can expect to see many more connectors added to the gallery over time.

Today, Microsoft partners like BearingPoint, Avanade, XMLaw, Core Technologies, BA-Insight, Captaris, Compugen, ConceptSearching, HP, IDV Solutions, iMason, Symantec, and Vorsite are also introducing new offerings to support these products. I envision numerous ways our partners can deliver additional value to you though their expertise and solutions in this growing market.

Since November, we've encouraged partners to learn more about how to extend Microsoft's enterprise search products. Over 4,000 partners have enrolled in our QuickStart program for Enterprise Search. I'd like to share with you some of what they've told us about the value they're delivering to customers in their own words:

“Microsoft Search Server allows us to deliver an extremely cost effective and highly scalable Enterprise Search solution. For the first time, we can clearly differentiate a feature, cost, and operations advantage for deploying MSS over its competitive offerings.” - Jeff Dunmall, Principal, iMason

”Increasingly we are seeing Microsoft's enterprise search technology forming the cornerstone of our customers' knowledge management efforts.” - Kevin Bellinger, Global Solution Manager, Digital Collaboration at Avanade

“Federated search connectors in Search Server 2008 will provide Enterprise Vault customers the ability to search their archived content and live content from the same search interface. One of the primary goals of Enterprise Vault is to provide a seamless end-user experience. Our federated locations for Search Server 2008 will help to further our ability to deliver on this goal.” - David Scott, Group Product Manager, Symantec

“XMLAW has been delivering SharePoint-based search and portal solutions to the top-end legal industry since the introduction of SharePoint 2003…. With the introduction of Microsoft Search Server 2008, we’re building on a more competitive platform. By adding federated search connectors to our legal search solutions we can deliver to more of our client’s needs, making it easier to position SharePoint as an enterprise search investment that can span their other search investments.” - Rob Saccone, President and CEO of XMLAW

I'd like to thank all of the Microsoft customers, partners, and employees who worked together to help us bring these exciting products to market! If you've had a positive experience using our products, we'd love to hear your story.

Kirk Koenigsbauer

General Manager,

SharePoint Business Group

It’s all about partners

enterprisesearch — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 18:10:00 GMT

Wow, the reception from around the industry on our Search Server Express announcement has been exciting! It looks like press coverage is helping to get discussions started: not just about our new products, but about what enterprise search can do for business productivity full stop. I admit the team and I are a bit giddy with hitting the milestone, announcing, and seeing how people are already starting to download and play with our bits.

Industry analysts are also talking about the announcement. An interesting element of their reactions has been how, given their domain expertise, they've looked beyond the product news of the day and have zeroed in on something I think is important about our approach: our partners.

Both the Burton Group’s Guy Creese and Forrester’s Ken Poore called out the great partner opportunity (Guy calls our partner ecosystem the “hidden weapon” here) from federation partners via our support for the OpenSearch standard to services to - interestingly enough - verticalized software and appliance solutions.

We’ve always been a partner-led company but there is something really compelling about this given the relative youth of the enterprise search market today. One thing we believe is that the questions and answers that are most valuable vary dramatically depending on role, industry, and the apps and repositories in use, so partner expertise in these areas is going to go a long way toward realizing search's potential.

We’re already getting interest from all kinds of potential partners, some I’d never have thought of myself. We’ll need to do more thinking here and I hope to have more to share along this front as we talk to folks.

Jonathan Kauffman
General Manager
Enterprise Search