ASP Kitchen: Classic ASP Articles: The Indexing Service Companion

The Indexing Service Companion

This article describes the Indexing Service Companion, a Windows application I have created that allows Microsoft Index Server to index content from remote websites and ODBC databases.

The Problem

The Windows Indexing Service is a great product! On the administrative side of things, it is easy to install, performance is good, and once installed maintenance tasks are minimal. The development of search applications using ASP is also made fairly straightforward through the use of the Query and Utility server components.

The main limitation of Indexing Service is that it can really only be used to index content hosted on servers on the same machine or network as the machine hosting the Indexing Service service. Although it is possible to set up a share to a Unix/Linux Apache webserver using a file sharing solution such as SAMBA, this isn't always satisfactory because Indexing Service is not case sensitive with respect to filenames, so this can cause problems when displaying search results.

Another issue is that it can be a chore to prevent Indexing Service from indexing certain content on a server. Unlike a web robot, it has no concept of the Robots Exclusion Standard specification (i.e. robots.txt files) and is unaffected by the 'robots' meta tag.

The Solution

Retrieving and indexing content from a web server by use of a web robot is the solution. The web robot is able to mimic a web browser, starting at one page in the site and traversing the links in the site until it has retrieved all of the pages of the site. The robot will potentially be able to retrieve content from any webserver, regardless of the platform it is hosted on. Two products that allow you to do this are Microsoft's Site Server 3.0 and the author's own Indexing Service Companion.

Microsoft Site Server 3.0

Microsoft's Site Server 3.0 software suite has a Search application that enhances Indexing Service by allowing you to (amongst other things) retrieve and index content from remote websites using an integrated web robot. For an overview of Site Server 3.0 Search, take a look at an article I wrote for ariadne.ac.uk. Unfortunately Site Server 3.0 Search has a few shortcomings, including:

• Site Server 3.0 isn't the easiest of applications to install.
• The product wasn't really designed for Windows 2000 Server.
• It doesn't appear that the product is still in active development.
• It isn't very useful if your websites are hosted by a third party, and they don't have Site Server 3.0 installed.
• Site Server 3.0 costs a lot of money, which cannot always be justified if you only want to use the Search application of the software suite.

Indexing Service Companion

The Indexing Service Companion is the cost effective method of retrieving content from remote webservers for Indexing Service to index. Furthermore it also allows retrieval of content from ODBC databases which can be subsequently indexed by Indexing Service.

Features

The main features of the Indexing Service Companion are:

• Enables Indexing Service to allow searching of potentially any web server or ODBC compliant database.

• Integrated web robot extracts content from websites. Includes support for robots.txt files and robots meta tags. Robot can negotiate sites using HTML Frames. Optional mode allows QueryStrings to be treated as distinct URLs (e.g. treat http://www.aspalliance.com/brettb/WebJobMarket.asp?Skill=ASP as being a distinct URL from http://www.aspalliance.com/brettb/WebJobMarket.asp?Skill=JSP).

• Ability to retrieve binary files from servers, including Adobe Acrobat PDF, Microsoft Office documents and even images.

• Support for full or incremental project updates of both web and database content, meaning that Indexing Service only has to re-index content that has changed.

• Configuration of the Indexing Service Companion is through the editing of a plain text configuration file.

• Indexing Service Companion can be run from the command line, and scheduled using the Windows Task Scheduler.

• Full reporting of activity to an external plain text log file.

• Flexible output options mean that administrative access to Indexing Service is not necessarily required.

• Facility for creating a basic table of contents page for the sites that are crawled [sample from my own website, sample from myCDE.com, sample from Lachesis.biz].

• Facility for creating a site summary page that can be used to optimise sites for search engines, by showing what keywords are used on a site, the <title> tags used by each page etc. The site summary page shows:
  • The top 40 most used keywords listed in the keywords meta tags in all of the pages crawled.
  • The body of the summary page contains the following from the pages encountered in the web crawl:
    • A list of page titles.
    • A list of page headings (H1 to H3 inclusive).
    • A list of bold (and strong) text.
    • A list of external hyperlinks in the site.
    • A list of italicised text.
    • A selection of relevant paragraph text. Paragraphs are assumed to be relevant if they contain one or more of the 40 most frequently used keywords.
    • A list of page description meta tags.
    • A list of page keywords.
    • A list of page description meta tags hyperlinked back to the URL from which each description was extracted.
    • A list of page keywords hyperlinked back to the URL from which it was extracted.

• Fully documented VBScript examples show how to make use of the Indexing Service Companion in ASP pages.

• Detailed documentation in Microsoft's HTML Help format.

• Fully documented Perl source code.

• Access to product updates and technical support.

Figure 1. The Indexing Service Companion contains fully searchable documentation in Microsoft's HTML Help format.

System Requirements

The Indexing Service Companion can be used on a machine running Microsoft Windows 95 or any subsequent version of Windows. Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 is recommended.

It also (of course) requires a server running either Indexing Service on Windows NT 4.0 Server, or the Indexing Service on Windows 2000. Note that Indexing Service Companion does not have to be run from the machine on which the Indexing Service is installed.

Configuring and Running the Indexing Service Companion

The Indexing Service Companion executable file or Perl script needs to be run from the Windows command line. Fortunately there is only a single mandatory parameter, which tells the script which configuration file to use. So to run the Indexing Service Companion for the Sample Project, an MSDOS Command Prompt is opened in the folder where the Indexing Service Companion files are installed installed and the following is typed:

IndexServerCompanion.exe --c="SampleProject/SampleProject.ini"

It is of course possible to run the Indexing Service Companion from .bat scripts, which can then be scheduled using the AT command or the Windows Task Scheduler. This makes it straightforward to update the Indexing Service's index of website and database content at specific times and frequencies.

The configuration file (in this instance it is called SampleProject.ini) is a plain text file containing a number of settings.

• View a sample configuration file.

The Indexing Service Companion is supplied with full documentation in Microsoft's HTML Help format that describes each of the configuration settings.

When the script is run, the Indexing Service Companion will display details of its status in the Command Prompt window. A detailed log file is also created.

• View a sample log file.

How the Indexing Service Companion Works

The Indexing Service Companion script contains a fully functional web robot that is able to extract the content from all of the required pages of the specified website. It contains support for the Robots Exclusion Standard specification, and support for the robots meta tag contained within individual pages. Each file extracted from the website is modified to contain a special meta tag that give the original URL (for web content). It is then saved to disk from where it can be indexed by Indexing Service. The contents of these special meta tags can then be used by the ASP page displaying the results of a web search, so that clicking on a search result item will display the original URL. Unfortunately Indexing Service will not allow you to retrieve the content from custom meta tags without making a minor modification in the Indexing Service's Microsoft Management Console (MMC), so there is also a special mode in the Indexing Service Companion that appends the original URL into the page's HTML <title> tag.

The Indexing Service Companion is also able to index content from database tables, queries (Microsoft Access) and stored procedures (SQL Server). Database connectivity is achieved through the use of ODBC, so potentially any type of database that has an ODBC driver is supported.

Searching Web Content with the Indexing Service Companion

Indexing Service Companion allows content from remote websites to be retrieved and consequently indexed by Indexing Service. A working example of this may be seen on my website at the following URL:

• http://www.winnershtriangle.com/w/Products.IndexServerCompanion.SampleSearch.asp

This is a search page running on Internet Information Server 4.0 (Windows NT 4 Server) that allows you to search my ASPAlliance site (including the article you are presently reading!), together with the articles I have written for Ariadne.ac.uk and ASPToday.com. Since I don't have administrative access to the Indexing Service on the machine hosting the search page, I have used the feature of the Indexing Service Companion that allows the document's original URL to be appended to the original title. For example the <title> tag of the ASPToday article "ASP Documentation Systems" at http://asptoday.com/content.asp?id=1435 is modified in the file saved to read:

<title>ISC_URL=http://asptoday.com/content.asp?id=1435 ASP Documentation Systems</title>

The URL and original title are separated by a tab character. The search results page then contains a small piece of ASP code to split this title back into the article's URL and original title.

The ASP code for the sample search page may be seen below:

• View sample ASP code.

Searching Databases with the Indexing Service Companion

The Indexing Service Companion is able to index content from database tables, queries (Microsoft Access) and stored procedures (SQL Server). It is of course entirely possible to search databases using Structured Query Language (SQL), but by making use of Index Server Companion, it is a lot more straightforward to integrate database searches with Indexing Service search results from web page searches. There are also other advantages: Index Server contains sophisticated pattern matching, and it is often lot faster at returning search results than an equivalent SQL statement would be when using a database such as Microsoft Access.

Indexing Service Companion is able to retrieve the rows of a specified database table and make an HTML file containing the data from a specific database row. Indexing Service can then be used to index the HTML files, and it is possible to extract the details of the table and row from which the data originated so that the search results page can be modified to point to the original database data. A sample page produced from the SQL Server sample pubs database is shown below:

<html>
<head>
<meta name="ISC_title_id" content="MC2222">
<meta name="ISC_title" content="Silicon Valley Gastronomic Treats">
<meta name="ISC_type" content="mod_cook ">
<meta name="ISC_price" content="19.99">
<meta name="ISC_pubdate" content="6/9/1991 12:00:00 AM">
<meta name="ISC_notes" content="Favorite recipes for quick, easy, and elegant meals.">
<meta name="description" content="Favorite recipes for quick, easy, and elegant meals."></head>
<title>Silicon Valley Gastronomic Treats</title>
<body>
</body>
</html>

In this example, the title field is optionally used to give the page a title, and the notes field is used for the description meta tag.

Each of the custom ISC_ prefixed meta tags can be queried using Indexing Service, although to retrieve their contents a minor configuration change to Indexing Service is required. It is straightforward to create a page which for example, will return the records where the value of the ISC_type meta tag is "mod_cook".

The Indexing Service Companion can also modify the HTML's <title> tag to include the table name and row ID, e.g.:

<title>ISC_Table=titles ISC_KeyField=title_id ISC_RowNumber=MC2222 Silicon Valley Gastronomic Treats</title>

Summary

The Indexing Service Companion allows Microsoft Indexing Service to index content from remote websites and ODBC databases, making it a cost effective way of significantly extending the functionality of Indexing Service.

Comments/Suggestions?

I've released the Indexing Service Companion in the hope that other users may find it useful! I'd love to hear what you think of it. Is it useful? What new features do you want? Email with your thoughts.

Downloads

• Indexing Service Companion Evaluation Version (1.1Mb zip file).

• Index Server Companion Documentation (121K zip file).

• Purchase the Indexing Service Companion ($39.99). [...more details]

• Special offers on both Indexing Service Companion and the ASP Documentation Tool.

• Download this article in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

• Download this article in Microsoft Word 97 format.

Further information

• The Microsoft Site Server Search Facility.

• Searching Indexing Service With ASP. Introductory guide to using Indexing Service from ASP.

• More about Searching Indexing Service With ASP. More advice and source code.

Useful Development Tools

ASP Documentation Tool™

Automatically creates technical documentation for ASP 2.0 and 3.0 web applications written in VBScript and JScript. Documentation for Microsoft Access, SQL Server 7/2000 databases and Visual Basic 6.0 components associated with the web application can also be incorporated into the reports. Documentation is created in HTML, HTML Help and plain text formats.

View Sample Output (HTML Help format).     View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (5.2Mb ZIP file).

.NET Documentation Tool

Automatically creates technical documentation for .NET Framework applications written in C# or VB.NET (including ASP.NET). Documentation for SQL Server 7/2000/2005 databases and C#/VB.NET components associated with the web application can also be incorporated into the reports. Documentation is created in HTML, HTML Help and plain text formats. Additional support for ASP.NET web applications. A useful alternative to the popular NDoc code documentor

View Sample Output (HTML Help format).     View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (3Mb ZIP file).

SQL Documentation Tool

The SQL Documentation Tool creates technical documentation for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, 2000 and 2005 databases. Technical documentation is created in HTML and HTML Help formats. The HTML Help format documentation is fully searchable and cross referenced. The SQL Documentation Tool documents SQL Server Tables, Views, Stored Procedures, Triggers, Table Relationships, Jobs and DTS Packages.

View Sample Output (HTML Help format).     View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (10.3Mb ZIP file).

VB Documentation Tool

The VB Documentation Tool creates technical documentation for Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 projects. Technical documentation is created in HTML and HTML Help formats. The HTML Help format documentation is fully searchable and cross referenced.

View Sample Output (HTML Help format).     View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (1Mb ZIP file).

The Website Utility

The Website Utility examines websites for errors and areas that need to be optimised for search engines by using a built in web crawling engine. Errors checked for include broken or moved hyperlinks, missing page titles and missing meta tags. It also generates HTML for use in creating website site maps (table of contents pages - like this one), and is able to create both client-side JavaScript search engines and server-side ASP search engines and ASP.NET search engines for a website.

View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (3Mb ZIP file).

Text Workbench

Text Workbench is a file search and replacement utility for text files and Microsoft Office documents. Make rapid file replacements on multiple files and folders full of files. Advanced replacement options include regular expressions support. It even works on remote file systems via FTP. A Regular Expression Laboratory allows advanced pattern matching and replacement expressions to be built and tested. This great utility will make your everyday development tasks much easier!

Download Trial Version (3Mb ZIP file; you have the option to either install directly from this link or save the file for later installation).

Indexing Service Companion

The Indexing Service Companion is a utility that extends the functionality of the Microsoft Windows Indexing Service so that it is able to index content from any remote website and also from ODBC compliant databases. As such it can be used as a low cost alternative to Sharepoint's Search Services.

View Product Documentation (119K ZIP file).     Try Sample Search Facility.     Download Trial Version (1.7Mb ZIP file).

ASP Spell Check

ASPSpellCheck is the easy way to add spell checking capabilities to your ASP or ASP.NET websites, Intranets and web applications. The utility allows you to add spell checking capabilities to any HTML text field or rich content editing text box. It works with all common web browsers, and there are no components or databases to install on the server.

Read ASPSpellCheck Review.     View ASPSpellCheck Examples.     Download Trial Version (3Mb ZIP file; you have the option to either install directly from this link or save the file for later installation).

Author details

Brett Burridge has worked as a web developer since 1997 and has developed web applications for a range of corporations, start up busiensses and educational establishments.

Brett is presently employed as an Internet developer and technical writer through his own company, Winnersh Triangle Web Solutions Limited. The company produces a number of innovative products, including a range of software documentation tools, which include the ASP Documentation Tool™, the .NET Documentation Tool for VB.NET and C#, and the SQL Server Documentation Tool. Other products include The Website Utility, which functions as a website error checker, search engine optimizer and ASP/ASP.NET search engine builder application.

As well as the ASPAlliance, Brett has written articles for Ariadne.ac.uk, ASPToday, the software documentation portal www.softwaredocumentation.info, and has contributed recipes to the ASP.NET Developer's Cookbook.    links

Outside web development, Brett is interested in travelling (here are my travel logs from New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo), digital photography (here's my photo gallery), tropical fishkeeping and collecting contemporary works of art by artists such as Doug Hyde.

Contact Brett by emailing

Article history

"The Indexing Service Companion" published on ASPAlliance.com on 30 August 2002. Last revised 15 November 2007.

ASP Kitchen: Classic ASP Articles: The Indexing Service Companion