Search Server and Federated Search

A US Company called IDV Solutions, who specialise in “Visual Composite Applications for the Enterprise” have put together a demo using Search Server 2008 and a Federated Search Connector that connects to Flickr.  Its a good example of how you could extend search to suit specific business requirements – you can look at their demo here.

I’m very interested in the developments going on around search services.  It kind of extends the way we might think about “Business Intelligence” if we are able to build applications where we could type in a search string (for example a customer name) and return back a profile which might contain results from our CRM system, financial results, what’s being said in MSN Money or Google News etc all in one results set.  I’m already looking at Search Server 2008 and plan to take a closer look at how it might fit into the BI space.

Technorati tags: Search Server, Federated Search

CopyTimer – Measure SharePoint Performance

Sean Kelley from the Microsoft SharePoint Online Services Group has created a little utility called CopyTimer.  This can be downloaded from CodePlex, and allows you to test file upload and download performance in SharePoint by configuring it to automatically upload and download test files and review timed results.  These results are stored in a SharePoint list which is created for you but could also be exported to Excel for further analysis.

I can see this coming in useful if you have SharePoint users connected at different speeds, for example if you have some locations coming in on a slower connection, or perhaps in different countries.  Sean shows how you might use CopyTimer here.

Technorati tags: SharePoint Performance

SQL Server Data Mining

If you are interested in the Data Mining capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server, be sure to check out the SQLServerDataMining.com.  This site has lots of useful add-ins and samples, such as Movie!Click which is a sample showing how you might use Data Mining as a suggestion engine behind an online video store (like the suggestions which pop up on sites like Amazon).

They also publish a periodic newsletter which you can sign up for – worth doing if you want to keep an eye on what’s going on in this area.

Technorati tags: sql server, data mining, business intelligence