This past week, I set myself the task of sorting out the various search options from Microsoft for both server and workstation environments. The idea, of course, is that we’ll zero in on Server 2008 solutions, but there have been so many variations of search technology from Microsoft that it seemed useful to try and get a “big picture” view of where they fit.
In order from oldest-and-most-limited to newest-and-most-powerful, the technologies we’ve seen on modern Windows platforms (which I’m defining as Windows 2000 and up) are as follows: Indexing Service, MSN Desktop Search, Windows Desktop Search, Windows Search, Search Server 2008 Express Edition, Search Server 2008, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Did I say it was a confusing landscape? Two of the above names appear in the Server 2008 Server Manager as optional components of the File Server role: Indexing Service and Windows Search Service. (According to Microsoft, you can’t use both at the same time.) So that’s as good a place to start as anywhere. We’ll eventually get to each search solution in turn.
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