Building Portals, Intranets, and Corporate Web Sites Using Microsoft Servers

All types of portals require search capabilities, as the extensiveness of content makes it challenging to find what you need by browsing alone. Microsoft provides two search engine choices: Index Server, which ships along with Windows server products, and the search engine that accompanies SharePoint Portal Server. Index Server is a full-text search engine that crawls web pages and provides simple and advanced searches via a web interface.

The SharePoint search engine (Figure 2.11) is the most sophisticated that Microsoft offers, and it is geared toward the knowledge management needs of an enterprise portal. In the likely event that the portal encompasses data sources in addition to static web pages, the search engine is essential for bringing content to users from file shares, databases, Lotus Notes, Exchange public folders, and other sources.

Adding powerful and accessible search functionality to your portal can provide immediate returns to users. It is one of the best ways to integrate heterogeneous data sources without requiring additional user training on the specifics of data storage.