Property Mappings or Why Microsoft Enterprise Search Is a Consultants’ Treasure Chest
May 31, 2010
First, navigate to “Creating Enterprise Search Metadata Property Mappings with PowerShell.” Notice that you may have difficulty reading the story because the Microsoft ad’s close button auto positions itself so you can’t get rid of the ad. Pretty annoying on some netbooks, including my Toshiba NB305.
Second, the author of the article is annoyed, but he apparently finds his solution spot on as something germane to open source search. Frankly I don’t get the link between manual scripting to perform a common function and open source search. Well, that’s what comes from getting old and becoming less tolerant of stuff that simply does not work unless there is a generous amount of time to fix a commercial product.
What’s broken? Here’s the problem:
One of the things that drove me absolutely nuts about Enterprise Search in MOSS 2007 was that there was no built-in way to export your managed property mappings and install them on a new server. A third party utility on CodePlex helped, but it was still less than ideal. With SharePoint 2010, well you still really can’t export your property mappings to a file, but you do get a lot of flexibility using PowerShell.
And the fix?
You use the baker’s dozen lines of code in the write up, substitute your own variable names, and presto, you can get access to that hard won metadata. Here’s the author’s key point:
It seems like a lot but it really isn’t. I create two managed properties (TestProperty1 and TestProperty2). In the case of TestProperty2, I actually map two crawled properties to it.
In my opinion, this type of manual solution is great for those with time to burn and money to pay advisors. Flip the problem. Why aren’t basic functions included in Microsoft’s enterprise search solutions? Oh, and what about that short cut for reindexing? Bet that works like a champ for some users. Little wonder that third party search solutions for SharePoint are thriving. And the open source angle? Beats me.
Stephen E Arnold, May 31, 2010
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Yep, VERY annoying about the ad! I do hate those things as this one is so bothersome that it defeats the purpose and my ability to read the article. I closed the link to that article WITHOUT reading it!
As I was not able to read the article, I cannot comment on the problem & “fix”, but I can say the only thing that is open source about SharePoint 2010 is the use of OpenSearch for Federated Search.
Perhaps, I’ll see you again at ESS 2010 in DC.
John
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