Search engines for networks? - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

6 Apr 2004

JC-

	I quick perusal of Microsoft's Web site reveals that this service is
installed as part of Internet Information Server and/or Index Server. It is
very Web-oriented, meaning that an HTML "search" page would programmatically
query the index and produce a result. Index Server (a separate product) has
built-in querying.

	I don't know if the IIS Indexing service can index anything other
than what's directly under wwwroot (the main Web site parent directory). I
looked at the man pages for swish-e and it will index anything that is under
single parent directory (which could be ".\users"). There doesn't appear to
be any way to index two independent trees, though.

Rich

-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces(a)classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctalk-bounces@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of J.C. Wren
Sent: Monday, April 05, 2004 10:40 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Search engines for networks?

    Win2K (and I think NT4) has a document indexing service.  For Win2K, 
goto Start->Settings->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer 
Management->Services And Applications->Indexing Service (I think there's 
a quicker way to get there, but I use that so infrequently I don't 
remember).

    You can configure what documents are indexed.  You can index PDFs 
with a free plugin from Adobe.  I think most MS formats are supported by 
default.  You can specify how often documents are indexed, what 
directories or drives, etc.

    The problem is the query tool isn't as readily available or as 
usable as I would like.  But it does work, and it's a little known service.

    --jc

John Foust wrote:

...
 At 09:36 AM 4/3/2004, you wrote:

>       I'm looking for a search engine I can use on my network in the house.
I
...
 >remember a long time ago (1998 or so), before the
"browser wars" AltaVista
>distributed a "personal AltaVista" that you could use on a personal
computer
...
 >to allow for indexing/searching a local
machine/network. This was at the
>time that AltaVista was owned by Digital. I found a lot of announcements of
...
  the product but
no actual download points.
Does anyone have this or something else I can use internally? The server
runs Windows NT Server and I can install IIS.

I've wished for it - or something comparable - many times since
then, too.  I was just talking about it with a friend the other
day.  One nice feature was that it could look inside popular
file formats, like Word docs and Zip files.

I don't remember if it was available as a single download.
If I knew a filename of the installer, I might have a ghost of
a chance to find it in a backup.  I don't think it required
NT Server.  I remember running it on NT 4.0.  If you find it, 
I'd love to get a copy, too.

- John