A Comparison of the Search Engines in FrontPage and Index Server

Advanced Administrative Tasks

A Comparison of the Search Engines in FrontPage and Index Server

The Microsoft® FrontPage® Server Extensions can use either of two search engines. The default search engine is the built-in WAIS search engine that is included with the FrontPage Server Extensions. On IIS, if Index Server (Indexing Services) is installed, FrontPage will use it instead of the WAIS search engine. Web servers other than IIS will always use the built-in WAIS search engine. The following table lists the advantages and disadvantages of each search engine:

Advantages

Built in WAIS search engine

Index Server

	Built into the FrontPage Server Extensions, so no additional configuration is required.
	The text index is immediately updated whenever a page is saved, resulting in instant feedback in search forms when creating and testing webs.

	The text index is not automatically updated when each page is saved, which improves performance.
	A rich set of page attributes are indexed and are displayed in the search results pages.
	You have much more flexibility in configuring which content is to be included in the text index.
	You can index of Microsoft Office documents.

Disadvantages

Built in WAIS search engine

Index Server

	The text index is updated whenever a page is saved, which can cause a noticeable delay when saving pages.
	To flush deleted documents from the text index, the web must be recalculated using the Recalculate Hyperlinks command.
	Microsoft Office documents are not indexed.

	Separate installation is required, and Index Server only works with Microsoft Internet Information Services.
	A separate configuration step is required for each virtual server.
	There is no immediate update of the text index, because Index Server uses a background indexing system. The lag between saving a page and updating the index can be confusing to web authors.

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