Feb 21, 2011 |
Federating Versus Indexing Have you ever wondered how Google returns a search result in less than a second? It's all made possible through the magic of indexing. On periodic basis, Google will go out across the Internet and crawl all of the content that it can access. During this process, the crawler pulls each and every document, webpage, or whatever, back to the indexer, were the document is broken down into the list of words it contains. Google creates a database which in the world of search is often called the index. When a user executes a query, the index is what is queried for relevant data resulting is sub-second response time. Think of an index as a data warehouse for unstructured information. Read more... |
Feb 21, 2011 |
Search Based Architecture - A New Paradigm for Enterprise Information Integration?
A fairly recent trend I've noticed in this space is an increasing interest in search connectors. A connector enables a search engine to crawl messaging and line of business systems. SharePoint Search and FAST, provide connectors for File Systems, Exchange Public Folders, Websites, and SharePoint out of the box, but Microsoft leaves it to partners to develop others. This makes sense. There are hundreds of business systems out there and Microsoft is careful about where they devote their resources. We've invested heavily in developing I.P. in this area. Read more... |
Nov 30, 2011 |
Turbo-Charge SharePoint / FAST Search with Managed Metadata Services
One of the most compelling features in SharePoint 2010 is Managed Metadata Service, or MMS for short. Simply put, metadata is data that describes other data. A good way to conceptualize metadata might be to think of a photograph that you've taken in the past. The photo is the actual data, and metadata that describes it might include the size of the file, where the photograph was taken and who is in it. In this post, I'm going to focus on how MMS can help you manage metadata, and how, if leveraged properly, it can significantly improve the quality of Enterprise Search in your organization.Why do I need metadata? Why can't I just search like I do on Google?
This is the question that comes up most often when I'm at trade shows, conferences, what have you. From a user's perspective, all they do on Google is enter two or three keywords, and voila - relevant results! What they are not seeing happens behind the scenes, before their query is ever run. The two or three word query is boosted by metadata. Read more... |
Nov 30, 2011 |
Live Webinar Q&A: 3 Ways to Kick Start SharePoint 2010's Managed Metadata Service
Last week I conducted a webinar entitled "3 Ways to Kick Start SharePoint 2010's Managed Metadata Service". The webinar was well attended with an great audience who asked terrific questions. The session began with an overview of MMS's core capabilities - both the strength and weaknesses of the technology will be covered in detail. I then provides a live demo of how three organizations are using MMS to achieve competitive advantage. I also demonstrates BA Insight's newest product - Longitude AutoClassifier. The Longitude AutoClassifier fully integrates with MMS to automate the classification of documents as they are being uploaded or indexed. Read all Q&A's here... |
Aug 23, 2011 |
Top 3 SharePoint/FAST Search Implementation Mistakes.
Mistake #1 - Failure to connect to backend systems
This particular topic generated quite a bit of interest when I presented at the New York, and Washington D.C. SharePoint Saturday events that recently occurred so I thought it made sense to summarize the webinar here.
Many people were surprised to learn that users often complain about enterprise search tools despite the high marks that they garner from Analysts such as Gartner. The analysis from Gartner below was conducted back in 2008 and pegged Microsoft as the leader in Enterprise Search. Microsoft has remained there ever since. Read more... |
Aug 22, 2011 |
Concept Search versus Keyword Search - Part 2one of my last posts, I blogged that I had been asked to evaluate the differences between the various search technologies in the market. I chose to compare Microsoft FAST, to Autonomy IDOL because of the stark contrast between both vendors approach. Autonomy's approach can largely be categorized as Statistical Analysis, whereas Microsoft uses Linguistic Analysis. |
June 23, 2011 |
Microsoft FAST versus Google Search Appliance 6.8I was recently asked to compare Microsoft Search (FAST / SharePoint Search) to Google's Search Appliance Version 6.8. Both companies have solid search technology, but they are approaching the market very differently. This is reflected in their products making each better suited for specific types of search deployments. |
May 12, 2011 |
Using SharePoint Search Alerts to Automate Corporate Email Governance
I don't use a lot of features when I'm searching on the Internet. In fact, beyond filtering a search result by a certain file type (images typically) I can't recall the last time I've used anything other than keyword search. This weekend I was reminded that there is in fact a feature that I'm always using, but took it for granted - Search Alerts. |
May 11, 2011 |
Autonomy vs. Microsoft I was recently asked about the differences of Autonomy's IDOL Search platform and FAST Search for SharePoint. The project to compare these two products turned out to be a challenge and it reminded me of a similar project that I did many years ago while I was working at an energy company. The energy company was about to form a software development team and I was asked to compare the Java and .Net development platforms... |
May 4, 2011 |
Free Webcast - Architecting SharePoint 2010 Search: Insight from the Field
I'll be hosting a webcast on Thursday, May 12th at 2 Eastern with our partner Daniel Webster, the Technical Architect at Summit 7 Systems. Daniel will be presenting the many topology alternatives available with SharePoint 2010 search. Some of the topics he'll be covering include: Physical server roles (Web, Query, Crawl, and Database servers), Logical server components (Index partitions, Query components, Crawl and Database store), Scale out decision points, and Example topologies. Click here to register. |
March 7, 2011 |
Q: What is the difference between Precision and Recall? Information retrieval experts define relevance as having two components; Precision and Recall In an Enterprise setting it is difficult to achieve acceptable measures in either. Here's why: Precision - When a user runs a two or three word query, there will be many documents that contain those terms.... |
March 2, 2011 |
Q: What makes relevance such a challenge in the enterprise?IT pros are often shocked when a search proof of concept appears highly successful, but when deployed into production users are anything but pleased, and so the inevitable question keeps coming up…"Why can't it just be like Google?"... |
March 2, 2011 |
Q: What is BA Insight's approach to improving relevance? A New Approach to Relevance in the Enterprise BA Insight has recently received a patent for a novel approach to improving relevance which I thought, when explained, would help some of you to think about relevance in a different light. ... |
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