Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

Chapter 8: Planning Your Information Structure 161
different portal site on the same server, on another server within your intranet, or on
the Internet.
SharePoint Portal Server builds a content index by crawling the locations specified
by the content sources and storing the results—such as Web pages and files.
For some content source types such as file shares and SharePoint sites, the content
index also stores the appropriate security credentials on the crawled content. This
enables the search results to show only items to which a user has access by enforcing
the security settings on each document as the result set is built.
You need to consider what information will and will not be hosted in Share-
Point Portal Server. For example, documents that will remain on a file server will
need to be crawled if those documents are to appear in the search result set. Knowing
that you have those documents and where they currently reside allows you to
make an informed decision about whether the documents should be moved into a
SharePoint document library or crawled and left in their current location.
Generally speaking, older documents that will not change need not be placed
in a SharePoint document library if the only method needed to find those documents
is the Search method. However, if users will need to browse the taxonomy
hierarchy to find older documents, you’ll need to move the documents into a Share-
Point document library or at least link to them using a links list.
Content Indexes
A content index is a flat text file that holds the data from crawled content in a content
source. Updating a content index requires crawling the locations specified by the
content sources and storing the results on the job server. Propagating a content index
consists of copying the index from the index server to the search servers. A portal site
search returns results from the content indexes stored on the search servers.
Every portal site includes content indexes that allow users to search for documents
inside or outside the portal site. After content is included in an index, the content
appears in search results on that portal site.
Source Groups
Source groups, topics, and areas are the elements of search scopes. Search scopes
allow you to define the breadth and depth of searches within portal sites and across
portal sites. These assignable components can create very flexible searches.
A source group is a list consisting of one or more content sources. Source
groups are one of the elements used to define search scopes. Source groups are created
and managed at the shared services level (if you are using shared services) and
can be assigned in any combination to a portal site search scope. These characteristics
allow you to easily define search scopes across portal site boundaries. For example,
if you want your marketing portal site users to be able to search content on the
sales portal site, you can create a search scope consisting of a source group that
encompasses all sales portal site data and a source group that encompasses all marketing
portal site data.