SharePoint: Picture Perfect Search
September 21, 2008
You have SharePoint search configured, optimized, and humming like a top. You have scaled up and out. Now you are ready for the next level in SharePoint. You are on the starting line for image search. For a useful guide to implementing image search within SharePoint, you will want to read and save Matthew McDermott’s “SharePoint Image Search.” This is a four part series, and you will need all four parts to round out your knowledge of the operation. You can retrieve the series here.
For me, the most useful part of the series was Mr. McDermott’s discussion of the procedures required to index images. Tips include finding and installing iFilters and then troubleshooting the iFilters. What sticks in my mind that multiple crawls and index inspection are necessary in order to find out exactly what has been retrieved and processed. Multiple crawls are trivial and quick on small SharePoint installations. When the SharePoint installation sprawls over hundreds or thousands of servers, the recrawls are non trivial. The procedure for mapping crawled properties to managed properties is a must save bit of explanation. Part 4’s sample code is as important. In fact, without this write up, the likelihood of a mere mortal getting SharePoint to deliver images in search results is pretty close to zero.
Three thoughts:
- This is a lot of work, particularly for large SharePoint installations. I personally would not go through these procedures and the recrawls, manual inspection, and code twiddling. Third party vendors deliver image results without this hassle.
- It’s clear that anyone with the programming knowledge, patience, and SharePoint bug can hack the system to perform some clever search operations. In my experience, large SharePoint installations and hacking are mutually exclusive. A glitch can be expensive to locate and remediate.
- Microsoft should add image search to its SharePoint service. The omission is egregious. I also want to locate other file types as well and without the hoop jumping.
Mr. McDermott deserves a happy quack. Microsoft earns a goose gift for not building this function into the system.
Stephen Arnold, September 21, 2008
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