This document discusses search-based applications and their components. It begins with an introduction to Agnes Molnar, a SharePoint MVP and consultant. It then discusses how search connects people to needed information and different types of search needs. It outlines components of enterprise search and search-based applications, including content sources, crawling, processing, ranking, interfaces and more. It provides examples of search-based applications and discusses challenges of the user experience, data integration and IT implementation.

2. Agnes Molnar
Beyond the Search Center -
Application or Solution?

3. About Agnes Molnar
• SharePoint Server MVP
• Senior Solutions Consultant, BA Insight
• Recognized blogger, speaker, writer
• Web: http://www.bainsight.com
• Blog: http://aghy.hu
• Email: Agnes.Molnar@BAInsight.com
• Twitter: @molnaragnes

4. Search
Search connects people
to the information
they need to get their jobs done.

5. Search
• „I know what I’m searching for and know how to
do that”
• „I know what I’m searching for but I don’t know
how to do that”
• „I don’t know what I’m searching for”
• „Am I Searching?...”

6. Enterprise Search
• Enterprise – is no longer within the firewall
• Relevance is critical
• Search within the organization
• „Transparent” Search
• Search Driven Applications

7. Search Components
Source: http://searchpatterns.org

8. Search Based Application (SBA)
• Software Application
• Built on a Search Engine backbone rather
than a database infrastructure
• Purpose is not classic information
retrieval, but rather mission-oriented
information access, analysis or
discovery

10. SBA Examples

12. 12

15. Challenges
User Multiple search
interfaces, systems, and
Experience logons; no unified search
Challenges results
Files and email on
Data and desktops; structured and
Expertise unstructured data silos;
untapped expertise
Challenges
Relevance and ranking;
Enterprise security, privacy &
and IT compliance;
scalability, manageability &
Challenges extensibility

17. Customizations for Search Driven Applications
Building on an extensible platform
Configure Extend Create
User Context Relevance Profiles Custom Elements
LOB Connectivity UI & Web Parts Work Environments
Content Processing Result Rollup New Innovations
Business language Visual Elements ….
Federation Sources Workflows
UI Look & Feel Analytics
….. …..

18. Content Sources

19. Content Sources in SBAs
• Combine (join) data
• Connect data
– Existing relationships in the source system
– Newly discovered, cross-system relationships
• Aggregate data
• Visualize data

20. Data Collection / Crawling
• Crawler:
– Connects to the Content Source
– Enumerates the content
– Reads the content items
– Extracts the metadata
– Sends the collected info back to the Indexer

21. Data Collection / Crawling
• Connector: Enables to access different types of
content
• OOTB:
– SharePoint
– File Share
– Web site
– Exchange Public Folders
– Custom Connectors
– (Lotus Notes)
– (Documentum)

22. Natural Language Processing
• Crawl/Index Time
– Language Detection
– Tokenization
– Stemming and Lemmatization
• Query Time
– Approximate Spelling
– Phonetic Spelling
– Word Truncation
– Regular Expressions
– Semantic Expansion
– Rules-based Matching

23. Processing: Crawled and
Managed Properties
• Crawled property: metadata extracted
from the documents/items during the
crawl.
• Managed property: can appear in refined
searches and helps users perform more
successful queries

24. Processing: Crawled and
Managed Properties

25. Processing: Ranking
• Ranking: produce results that are ordered
according to some computed relevancy score
• Dynamic: Based on weighted managed
properties (title, body, social tags, etc.)
• Static:
– File Type
– Click through relevancy
– Depth

26. Processing: Ranking

27. Processing: Relevance Tuning

28. User Interface
• OOTB Web Parts
– Refinement Panel
– Core Results Web Part
• Federation
• People Search
• Scopes
• Custom Web Parts
– Visual Navigation
– Mashups
– Etc.
• Workflows – Act on Items Immediately

29. Search Federation
• Using remote index for queries
• Location type:
– SharePoint Search index
– FAST index
– OpenSearch 1.0/1.1

30. Search Federation

31. Search Federation
• Benefits:
– No resources needed for indexing
– Custom Credentials
– Usage restrictions
– Prefix / Pattern match
– Query Template
• {searchTerms} scope:Documents
• {searchTerms} type:.doc type:.docx type:.docm
• BUT:
– Live Internet connection is required
– Bandwith
– No control over results (order, relevance, etc.)
– Separated Web Parts

32. Search Federation

33. Summary
• Search Based Applications?
– Need to Aggregate Heterogeneous Content
– Neet to Process Large Volume of Data
– Need for Real Time Information
– Need for Ad Hoc Reporting

34. Email: Agnes.Molnar@BAInsight.com
Twitter: @molnaragnes
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