My presentation from the 2017 Chicago Coder Conference. Azure Search is a search-as-a-service from Microsoft that allows companies to integrate this powerful, REST-based platform into their applications quickly. Not to be left out in the crowd, Amazon CloudSearch also is a cloud based search product that provides popular search features for applications. Both services can index large volumes of log files and/or text content in real-time and allows users to query them in free form text using RESTful APIs. Join me to find out how you can employ one of these services to make the search experience on your ASP.NET website more accurate, faceted, and downright a pleasure to use no matter how much content you have.

1. by Brian McKeiver
Co-Owner & Kentico MVP at BizStream
Search Bogging You Down?

2. Why Are We Here
1. What Can I Do?
2. How Cloud Search helps?
3. What’s the Future

3. When you see this…
Let’s talk about this over a beer

4. Search is Tough
 Complex
 Requires constant rebuilding
 Requires constant tuning
 Needs to be industry / site / context specific
 Difficult to predict load
 If it doesn’t work, you’ll know really fast

5. And then the business people…
 “Well it should just work like Google right?”
 “I don’t understand, can’t you just do it like Amazon?”
 “I searched for blue, how come bluebird, birdblue, and “my bird is blue” didn’t
rank in the results?”
 “Why doesn’t product ABC result show first compared to category page?”
 “Did you mean the instead of teh?”
 And then, of course, there is SharePoint search…

6. Ask me about search one more time...
…I dare you.

7. Cloud to the Rescue!

8. Amazon Search(es)
CloudSearch
Elasticsearch
Feature Smackdown:
http://harish11g.blogspot.com/.../amazon-cloudsearch-vs-elasticsearch-comparison

9. How Do They Work
1. Create
2. Upload
3. Search

10. Add Documents
to Index

11. AWS Console + IMDB Demo

12. Search over HTTP
http://search-mcbeevcom-274v6y47mprleizqshrwsewlki.us-west-
2.cloudsearch.amazonaws.com/2013-01-01/search?q=office

13. Azure Search
 PaaS Platform
 Released in 2014
 HTTPS / API-only service
API Keys
 Cloud hosted indexes
 Low administration
maintained by Microsoft
 Plans
Free – 10K Documents / 3 Indexes
Basic – 1M Documents / 5 Indexes
Standard S1 – 15M Documents / 50 Indexes
Standard S2 – 60M+ Documents / 200 Indexes
Standard S3 – 120M+ Documents / 200+ Indexes
 Scalability
Multiple tiers
12 Data Centers over 6 regions
• Analytics
Built-in, Power BI

14. Creating Indexes
 Data must be hosted in Azure
 Push / Pull Model
Push – SDK / REST APIs
Pull = Indexers (SQL Database / VM
SQL / Document DB)
 Can have up to 1000 fields in each
index
 Field Properties
Key
Searchable
Sortable
Filterable
Retrievable
Suggestions

15. Searching
 Single index only
 Full-text queries
Prefix matching
 Syntax
OData syntax for Boolean
Simple query syntax for full-text
• Search=* (all fields) / Specific columns
 Scoring
Scoring Profiles
Field weighting
Custom functions
 Azure Search SDK / REST API

16. Demo time
+

17. Advanced Features
 Languages
50 languages
Lucene / Microsoft analyzers
 Facets
Schema-driven
Define columns to categorize
Facet=Rating,value:1|2|3|4
 Filters
Used with facets
Operators
 Highlighting
highlight=[field name]
 Suggestions
Auto-complete
Fuzzy / Infix
 Location based
Results sorted from closer to farther away
from a reference location
 CORS
None / All / Custom

18. Analyzing Your Data
• Power BI Content Pack
• Free!, Contains major data points
• Search Reports
• Most Common Search Queries
• Searches Over Time
• Number of Searches
• Indexing Reports
• Indexing Requests, Documents Indexed, 503s
Report

20. AWS CloudSearch Pricing
https://aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/pricing/
$43.19 / mo
$68.81 / mo
$137.62 / mo
$275.24 / mo
$550.47 / mo

21. Azure Search Pricing
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/search/

22. Learn More
 What is Azure Search?
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/search-what-is-azure-search/
 Azure search – Helpful resources
http://devslice.net/2015/01/azure-search-helpful-resources/
 Azure Search Service REST API
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/Dn798927.aspx
 Channel 9 Azure Search Videos
https://channel9.msdn.com/Search?term=Azure Search
 Microsoft Virtual Academy
https://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/search/SearchResults.aspx?q=Azure Search
 PostMan
https://www.getpostman.com/
 Azure Search Power BI
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powerbi/archive/2016/01/19/visualizing-azure-search-data-with-power-bi.aspx

23. Questions & Answers

24. Brian McKeiver
Co-Owner & Kentico MVP, BizStream
Phone: (616) 481-1631
Web: www.bizstream.com
Email: bmckeiver@bizstream.com
@mcbeev
www.linkedin.com/in/brianmckeiver
www.mcbeev.com