Category: FAQs

Build real enterprise search in your Joomla site. Don’t limit your search to just page content or a Google or Yahoo! Search box. Deliver full search of up to 500,000 documents with the Esearch Joomla component powered by TNR’s SolrHQ system running Solr

Side-by-side comparison

Enhanced Joomla! Search	Normal Joomla! Search
{loadposition esearch-module-example}	{loadposition search-module-example}

Abstract:

TnR Global Enterprise Search Component for Joomla driven by IBM Yahoo! OmniFind Edition is a standard Joomla component that can be installed into the Joomla open source content management system. The component (and a matching search module) provide the Joomla site with direct access to an OmniFind search system. The Joomla administrator can define the look of the search box and the search results using a standard CSS file and a Smarty template.  The OmniFind enterprise search can be placed on any server the Joomla system can reach, allowing it to be behind a corporate firewall.

The component is designed to provide enterprise search for your Intranet or Extranet, as well as corporate information to clients on your public web site. All content collections that you want to make available can now be published with the full power of IBM enterprise search.

Full featured Joomla Component and Module

The component (and a matching search module) provide the Joomla site with direct access to one or more OmniFind search systems. OmniFind can run on the same server as the Joomla system or on an enterprise search server behind a firewall.

Match Site look with Search/results Template

The search box and the results look are controlled using a Smarty template and a standard CSS file. The Joomla
administrator has full control of the appearance of the search results page and can add additional controls and filtering to OmniFind search.

Enterprise Search connector interface

Connectors enable the TnR Global ESearch component to connect to many different types of search engines. The Search Connector is a single file that tells the Esearch Component how to access the installed search engine. In addition to providing functionality to search, the connector also defines its human-readable name and any additional parameters it needs from the user. Creating a Search Connector should be done by an experienced php programmer.

The IBM Yahoo! Edition OmniFind Search Connector is provided with the component by default.

The component is available as a free download.

An exploration of how Enterprise Search is unque from other types of search.

Enterprise search is  used to find unstructured data contained in e-mails, text documents, voice feeds, videos and slide shows.

Such software systems help users locate data scattered among a network’s desktop computers, handheld devices and server-powered data centers. And most e-commerce sites provide enterprise search to help buyers find data about products that are sold through that site.

Other forms of enterprise search incorporate more conventional forms of database search of company records, desktop databases and spreadsheets.

Here are some numbers to take into consideration as to how much ES projects cost:

Open-source systems No License Fee
These systems must be installed, configured, and customized by the user.  Support and professional services are generally available only for the more active proejcts.

Lower-priced system $2,000 to $50,000
These systems, in general, must be installed by the licensee.
Support and professional services may not be available or are not widely available.

Mid-range system $51,000 to $250,000
These systems offer various advanced features such as clustering or
natural language processing; however, extra cost services are available from the vendors or integrators.
The companies in this price range may not have the market profile of the higherend systems.

Higher-priced system $250,000 to seven figures
These systems provide a wide range of features and are generally supported by either the vendor’s professional services unit or established integration firms. Typical features include multiple options for achieving core features, workflow functionality, and advanced linguistic options.

A Enterprise Search engine has two sections, a front end and a back end. They both operate in conjunction with the search index. The index is build statically for search speed, and is updated periodically.  This is unlike a database where the indexes are built and keep current as any data in the database changes.

Back End:

The back end are the functions that create and update the index

Crawler – This module reads and collects web pages and follows the links between them, starting with a list of initial URLs.

Document Processor – This module processes web pages feed from the crawler, as well as databases from a ‘database connector’ and directories of files.  It pulls the meaningful text from the documents, no matter the type, and adds whatever meaningful ‘meta-data’ it can determine, such as title or authors.

Indexer – This module does the brute force work of creating and maintaining the index from the documents fed from the document processor.

Front End:

The Front end  are the functions that respond to a user’s request for search.

Web server – The user’s browser fetches a web page from the web server with a search form and sends responses with the user’s query back to the web server.

Query processor – The web server sends a request with the user’s query to the query processor, which properly formats the request and sends it to one (or more) search modules, collects the results and sends them to the web server for final formating.

Search Engine – This does the heavy lifting of searching for the query within the index created by the back end.