Wildcard search 3rd party addon

Question

Hi,

What options are there for getting better search experience like wildcard search from 3rd party vendors?

Answer 1

There are several approaches and tools out there that you can implement to add wildcard functionality into SharePoint, and most of them are without cost or obligation.

• Ramon Scott has posted a walkthough on how to configure wildcard searches yourself in your SharePoint environment. Be sure to check out the post's comments for additional information and a link to another post Ramon wrote on the subject - http://www.ramonscott.com/wordpress/?p=8
• Corey Roth has contributed a free wildcard search add-on for MOSS to CodePlex. As with all CodePlex applications its support is going to be limited, but it is a full 1.0 release of the component and it appears that Corey is still making updates to the project - http://www.codeplex.com/WildcardSearch
• Ontolica Search offers a free wildcard search add-on, with no restrictions on its use.  I don't know what kind of support they offer it, and you will have to provide them marketing contact information in order to download it, just as an FYI - http://www.ontolica.com/Ontolica%20for%20MOSS%202007/Ontolica%20Wildcard.aspx/
• There's also another project for MOSS wildcard search on CodePlex you can check out (tip of the hat to Paul Galvin for finding this):  http://www.codeplex.com/SPWildCardSearch/

I don't have any personal experience with any of these options, so I can't really recommend one over the other for you. Keep in mind that the two Codeplex projects are listed as MOSS only, and I don't know if the other two are compatible with WSS or not, so if you are running WSS you may not be able to implement any of them...

John

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MCTS: WSS v3, MOSS 2007, and SCOM 2007

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Answer 2

Thanks for the reply John.
I will look into them

I'm happy to pay for a good product with support, paying is not an issue.

Answer 3

I've found this two products that seem very similar:

http://www.ba-insight.net/ with their Longitude product.
http://www.ontolica.com/Ontolica%20for%20MOSS%202007/Ontolica%20Search.aspx Ontolica Search

Pricing is similar.

Anybody know the difference or have experience of any?

Answer 4

If pricing it not a matter here and you are using Microsoft SharePoint, then go for below microsoft product for search solutions:

Enterprise Search From Microsoft

http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/en/us/fast-customer.aspx

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Visit: http://yagyashree.wordpress.com MCP & MCTS [WSS 3.0/MOSS]

Answer 5

Thanks Yagashree,

I just discovered pricing does matter! :)

Answer 6

Anyone tried Ontolica or Longitude?