This document provides a technical overview of the capabilities of Microsoft Search Server 2008 Standard and Express. Dicussed is everything from hardware requirements, licensing, administration, and security. Of particular interest are the slides around search federation.

2. Viral Tarpara
Microsoft
www.HaveYouSeenMyStapler.net

3. You understand and can articulate the
feature set of Microsoft Office SharePoint
Server 2007 for Search (MOSSfS)
You want to use this deck to highlight only
the new features and functionality in
Microsoft Search Server 2008 that are not
available in MOSSfS

4. Updated and rebranded version of
SharePoint Server 2007 for Search
Key investment areas and new features
Simplified Installation Experience
Enhanced Administration Interface
New Federation Capabilities
Performance and Stability Enhancements
No Preset Document Limits
Available in 2 versions
Microsoft Search Server 2008 (MSS)
Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express (MSSX)

5. Search Server 2008 can be installed in a
distributed topology to provide greater scale
and redundancy
Search Server 2008 Express can only be
installed in single server mode
Search Server 2008 is licensed per server
Search Server 2008 Express is FREE
There are no other feature differences

6. No charge update for MOSS customers
Applies to Standard and Enterprise CALs
Delivered by a post MOSS SP1 update patch
targeting H1 CY08
Via Microsoft Update and the Download Center
MSS features will also be included in SP2
No change to search features in WSS 3.0
Timeline will be
1. MOSS and WSS SP1
2. MSS RTM
3. MSS Update Patch for MOSS

8. Recommended Hardware
Dual 3GHz processors
4GB RAM
At least 3GB free HDD space
Software Requirements
W2K3 SP1 or greater or W2K8
.NET Framework 3.0 with ASP.NET 2.0 enabled
Windows Server Application Role configured

9. Easy to follow installation “Splash screen”
Server Preparation Tool which installs
Windows Server 2003 SP1 if required
.NET Framework 3.0 if required
IIS and configured the Application Server Role
if required
Choice of 2 installation options
Basic Install
Advanced Install

11. Quickest and easiest option
Takes ~20 minutes and less than 10 clicks
Automatically Installs SQL Express
Automatically provisions and configures
Service Accounts
Database settings
Search Center Site
Shared Service Provider Site and settings
All other settings…
Search Server is operational and can be
serving results within ~35 minutes of
beginning setup

13. Enables advanced options to be configured
Takes ~30 minutes
Does not install SQL Express
Allows the administrator to
Specify SQL Server Configuration Options
Create and configure Farm server roles (MSS only)
Specify Service accounts
Change the default Index file location
Set Other Search Service configuration options…
Automatically provisions search server site and
starts services
Search Server is operational and can be serving
results within ~45 minutes of beginning setup

15. Supported
From To
Windows SharePoint Services v3.0 Search Server 2008 or Search
with Full SQL Server Server 2008 Express with Full SQL
Server
Windows SharePoint Services v3.0 Search Server 2008 or Search
with MSDE Server 2008 Express with SQL
Express
Search Server 2008 Express with Search Server 2008 with Full SQL
Full SQL Server Server
SharePoint Server 2007 with Full
SQL Server
Search Server 2008 Express with Search Server 2008 with SQL
SQL Express Express
Search Server 2008 with Full SQL SharePoint Server 2007 with Full
Server SQL Server
Microsoft Confidential

16. Search Server 2008 is built on WSS 3.0
An in-place upgrade will
Upgrade WSS 3.0 to Search Server
Enable existing WSS 3.0 site search to be flipped
on a per site basis to use Search Server search
Allow you to continue to use WSS 3.0 as before
Enable cross-site search in WSS 3.0
A clean install of Search Server will
Install WSS 3.0
Allow you to use all the features of WSS 3.0
Automatically enable cross-site search in WSS
3.0
Microsoft Confidential

17. Unsupported
From To
SharePoint Server 2007 for Search Search Server 2008 or Search
Enterprise or Standard Edition Server 2008 Express
Search Server 2008 or Search Search Server 2008 or Search
Server 2008 Express BETA or RC Server 2008 Express RTM
SharePoint Server 2007 or any Search Server 2008 or Search
previous versions of SharePoint Server 2008 Express
Search Server 2008 or Search SharePoint Server 2007
Server 2008 Express with SQL
Express
Search Server 2008 or Search Search Server 2008 or Search
Server 2008 Express with SQL Server 2008 Express with Full SQL
Express Server
Microsoft Confidential

19. Landing page displayed after install
Designed to walk administrators through
the initial basic tasks to get up and running
quickly
Provides links to
The search administration page
Help on how to configure a content source
Run a query
A “friendly introduction” to the product

20. Consolidated UI to place key administrative
tools and information one click away
Aggregates search settings from
Search Center Site
Shared Service Provider
Central Administration
Provides a unified view of server status
Active crawl status
Status of recently completed crawls
Search Server system status
Includes links to improved “task orientated”
documentation

22. Much improved reporting on content
source current and historical crawl activity
including
Last and current crawl duration
Last crawl completed
Last crawl start and end times
7 and 30 day averages of
• # of Successes
• # of Errors
• Incremental crawl duration
• Full crawl duration

25. Enables the display of results from other search
engines or applications to be displayed alongside
local results
Search Server will
Send a query to other search engines or applications
Format and render the results
Work out of the box or with minimal effort with many
existing search engines and applications
Search Server will not
Aggregate multiple result sets into a single result set
Relevance rank results from other search engines or
applications

27. Each search engine or application must be
configured as a Federated Search Location
Each Federated Search Location
Defines how and when queries will be
federated to the location
Controls the formatting of results
Defines authentication settings
Can be connected to one or more Federation
Web Parts to render results
Is easily imported and exported as a
Federated Location Definition file (.FLD)

28. OpenSearch 1.0/1.1
Query is sent in a parameterized URL
• http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q={searchTerms}
{searchTerms} is replaced with query terms
Results must be returned as XML
Local Search Index
Query is sent through the search object model
• {searchTerms} scope:customers
{searchTerms} is replaced with query terms
Results are returned as XML

29. Standard created by Amazon A9 for search
syndication and aggregation
An exported Federated Location Definition
file is >= an OpenSearch Description
Document
Search Server extends the OpenSearch
schema to include properties such as;
Triggers
XSL
Location Type
More Results Link…
See www.opensearch.org for more info

30. Control when to send query terms to a
location based on the terms submitted
Always - Will always send all the query terms
to the location
Prefix - If the prefix matches will only send
the query terms after the prefix to the location
Pattern - Will send some or all of the query
terms based on the regular expression match.
A pattern trigger can be used to build complex
triggers including “OR” statements

31. Federated Results Web Part
Connected to a single Federated Location
Displays the top X results returned from the
location
Top Federated Results Web Part
Connected to multiple Federated locations
Displays the top X results from the first location to
return a result in the order of the configured
locations
Neither Web Part will render if the location is
triggered but it returns zero results

32. Built in XSL for
OpenSearch Locations that return results as
RSS, RDF, ATOM & ATOM2
Local Search Server Index results
Built in XSL can be customized or replaced
Configured in the Location Definition and can
be overridden on individual Web Parts
Separate XSL definition for both of the
Federated Results Web Parts
“More Results” Link Template available for
click through to HTML results

33. Three modes of authenticating to a location
Anonymous – No credentials required
Common – Shared credentials
User – Per user credentials
Per user credentials requires custom work
Code to capture credentials in the UI
Code to store credentials if required
Code to retrieve stored credentials if required
Sample code will be available on MSDN by RTM
Exception is Kerberos which does work OOB
Per user credentials are sent to the location in
the correct format automatically

34. Authentication Type Common Identity Per User
Kerberos N/A 
Basic Authentication  
NTLM (App pool)  N/A
NTLM  
Form Based  
Cookie Based  

35. How to connect Search Server to Live Search
Query Template
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q={searchTerms}&f
ormat=rss
“More Results” Link Template
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q={searchTerms}
Works without any extra effort because live.com can
Process a query in a URL
Return results formatted as XML (RSS)
Be accessed anonymously
There are many other search engines and
applications that provide the same connectivity

36. Connect to a remote MOSS or MSS index
Create a new OpenSearch location
Query Template
http://mss2008/_layouts/srchrss.aspx?k={searchT
erms}
“More Results” Link Template
http://mss2008/results.aspx?k={searchTerms}
Uses the search RSS feed from remote
MOSS or MSS search servers
MOSS and MSS are OpenSearch compliant

37. Develop or purchase if the location does not
support one or both of the following
Process a query in a URL parameter
Return results as XML
Federated Search Connectors do one or both
of the following
Accept a query as a URL parameter and convert
it to a format compatible with the location
Convert and render results in XML
Developed as a web page (aspx)
Packaged and deployed as a Solution
Deployment Package

38. Connect Search Server to the full text search
engine in SQL Server
Cannot send a query to SQL in a URL
Build an ASPX page that
Provides a URL for the Query Template
Extracts the {searchTerms}
Contains code to run the query against SQL
Formats and renders the results as XML (RSS)
If required include code to leverage either
corporate or per user authentication
Packaged up and installed as a Solution
Deployment Package
Sample code on MSDN for SQL < 50 lines of code

39. Federated Location Definition Gallery
Linked from within the admin UI
Selection of FLD’s to download and import
from Microsoft and Community submissions
Quick, easy and free
Federated Search Connector Gallery
Partner built Federated Search Connectors
Primarily for LOB applications and services
Available for purchase

40. OneBox Search Notes
Server
Query
  Both use a URL to pass a query to a
remote source
Results
  Both customizable but Search Server
delivers more than just Instant Answers
and can out of the box federate to any
XML (RSS&ATOM) source
Security
  OneBox supports per user NTLM, FBA
and Basic Auth out of the box, we require
extra work
Partner
solutions   OneBox has established federation
partners, we are ramping up for launch
Can federate to
SharePoint   Targeted best bets, people and other
tabs more discoverable, BDC best bets,
geographically distributed indexes…

42. No preset document limit in MSS or MSSX
The # of documents available in the index is
determined by the version of SQL used
Up to 400K documents with SQL Express
• Limited by the 4GB database limit in SQL Express
Up to 50M docs with SQL Server 2005
• Using appropriately scaled hardware
Can use either version of SQL with either
version of Search Server
Search Server 2008 is recommended for
deployments with >1M documents

43. Query Performance Improvements
Index format change for large scale deployments
(10’s of millions of docs)
Separate index file for “expensive” query terms
New compression algorithm for reading/writing
index files
Optimized SQL and Indexer round trips
Crawl Performance Improvements
More efficient use of SQL Stored Procedures
Reliability improvements
Fixes for Master merge issues, Index corruptions
and Service crashes

44. New support for crawling web sites
protected by Forms or Cookie based
authentication
Credentials entered through a web UI that
displays the login page
Content is indexed under one account
Need to write a query time security trimmer to
trim results if required
Microsoft Confidential

45. microsoft.com / enterprise search