Replacement for Microsoft Index Server?

Question

We're moving a legacy .ASP application to a new hosting provider that doesn't support Microsoft Index Server, on which one portion of the site depended. The application has a directory tree containing around 10,000 documents (text, MS Word and PDF) whose contents need to be indexed and to be searchable.

The application is staying classic .ASP for now but the search portion could be written in anything. We tried a tool called SiteSearchASP.Net but that number of documents was outside its reach.

A Google appliance is outside the client's budget, and these documents need to stay private so Google search isn't an option.

Anyone have experience with anything that might work?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 24 '12 at 11:41

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Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express is free, much like the other great express products. Easy to configure, powerful and definitely within your budget ($0).

edited Sep 24 '12 at 11:41

answered Jun 04 '09 at 18:38

x0n

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 07 '14 at 14:45

I have been investigating the same question for my own line-of-business application that uses Index server, since it has been dropped from Windows Server 2012

Alas Windows search is not really the successor to Index Server, lacking interfaces for configuring multiple catalogs, amongst other things. The interface provided is oriented toward searching all the content on a workstation, rather than a platform for content searching on a line of business app.

MS Search Server is more complex to set up than Index server, and oriented toward URL crawling rather than file searching. The versions I looked at did not seem to provide the flexible API of Index Server.

The Lucene.Net toolkit is attractive, but you have to write a lot of infrastructure around it to make it work. It is not an out-of-the-box tool in the way Index Server was. It does offer the potential of a much better integrated solution than you could achieve with index server if you have the time to invest.

dtSearch is quite close to the concept of Index Server, but costs significant money. This is probably the easiest option if it is cost-effective.

Index Server was the unsung hero the original Cairo project. Perhaps some of the underlying engine lives on in the 'successor' products, but it is sad to lose it from Windows Server 2012. Microsoft have been very effective in recent years in monetizing their server business. I feel this may be one of the causalities of that strategy.

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

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Try Lucene.NET Lucene.Net and SQL Server

edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

Community

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answered Jun 04 '09 at 18:41

Todd Smith

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score 0 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:06

You want the Windows Search Service, which is the current incarnation of Index Server. Search Service is available on Win 2008 and Win 2012, however it is not installed by default.

Note that Search Service is distinct from Search Server. Search Server is a different animal, with different api's (but a similar overall product goal).

Search Service details: https://stackoverflow.com/a/23742911/147637

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 04 '09 at 18:35

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Perhaps "Windows Search"? It's the successor to Indexing Service.

answered Jun 04 '09 at 18:35

John Saunders

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Replacement for Microsoft Index Server?

5 Answers5