Saturday 26 January 2008

MS Search Server 2008 Part 1 - What is MSS 2008?

In the last few weeks I did some research on the new MS Search Server 2008 product. This will result in a series of blogposts on this subject. Ok, let's start !

MS Search Server 2008 is a new product of Microsoft and is actualy an "Updated and Rebranded version of SharePoint Server 2007 for Search". It is an advanced search for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and if i mean advanced, i mean as advanced as the Moss Search !! So this is real interesting stuff to look at!

One new cool thing that will be introduced with MS Search Server 2008 is the FEDERATED SEARCH functionality. This will enable you to display search results from other search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSDN, Wikipedia, ... You also can connect to Flickr, You Tube, ... or you can build your own search applications. In one of my next posts i will discuss the Federated Search functionality in more detail !

These are the WSS and Moss versions today:

  • Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS)
  • MS Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard Edition
  • MS Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise Edition
  • WSS v3.0 + Infopath Forms Server
  • WSS v3.0 + SharePoint Server 2007 for Search Standard (500.000 documents limit)
  • WSS v3.0 + SharePoint Server 2007 for Search Enterprise

these last two version will be updated and rebranded to MS Search Server 2008.

So in summary : MS Search Server 2008 =
WSS v3.0 + Advanced Moss Search !

When will the product be available?

At this moment there is Release Candidate 1, in the comming month(s) the final version will come available. Ather the RTM version of MSS 2008 MS will release a patch for Moss 2007 that will contain some search improvements and the Federated Search and believe me, many people will like this new feature !!

Some extra resources:
Introducing Microsoft Search 2008
Microsoft Search Server 2008 features
Technical Resources for Microsoft Search Server 2008

There is also a VPC available with MS Search Server 2008 RC1, you can download it here

My next post will discuss the 2 versions of MS Search Server 2008 !

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