Integrating Microsoft Fast search with Sitecore

Question

I'm trying to find some information explaining/showing how to integrate Microsoft Fast search with Sitecore

So far all I have found are plenty of job adverts and the occasional digital agency that notes use in their solutions.

Basically.. can any one point me in the correct direction or tell me if there is an off the shelf Sitecore module that just does the correct thing?

Thanks

Answer 1

We've done it for some projects here, but didn't have anything off the shelf as a module so needed to build something ourselves. I'll preface my answer with the comment that I am no FAST expert, but have had the honour of working with some folks who did know their stuff ;)

For our projects, we used a FAST Enterprise Search Platform .NET API (ESP .NET) and we built a project around that to provide us with a layer to perform our queries with. We implemented methods for executing searches to wrap around what was already returned by the API. For example:

ISearchView view = _searchFactory.GetSearchView(searchView);

Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Query.IQuery query =
            new Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Query.Query("string(\"" + searchTerm + "\", mode=simpleall)");

IQueryResult result = view.Search(query);
return result;

In the example above, we also had code that actually took the IQueryResult and wrapped it into our own search object layer so we could extend the API for our own purposes. There was nothing really "Sitecore" in our particular way of approaching things, other than loading some configurations out of the CMS which helped drive some of our layer.

The ESP API uses a search factory configuration to allow you to configure which search engine to connect to which can easily be included into your Sitecore .NET config files. This is an example of the configuration:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
    <configSections>
        <section name="HttpSearchFactory" type="System.Configuration.NameValueSectionHandler" />
    </configSections>
    <HttpSearchFactory>
        <add key="Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Http.RequestMethod" value="GET" />
        <add key="Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Http.QRServers" value="fastserver.mydomain.com:1234" />
        <add key="Com.FastSearch.Esp.Search.Http.CertiticateFile" value="" />
    </HttpSearchFactory>
    <appSettings>
        <add key="NavigatorPrefix" value="nav-" />
        <add key="EnableReporting" value="false" />
    </appSettings>
</configuration>

Probably one of the reasons you are seeing agency adverts and the job ads is because FAST implementations are not a "plug and play" type of solution in most cases, and the general recommendation is probably for you to employ a firm that has done this before to get you started up so you don't have to bang your head against FAST when somebody else has already gone through the head-banging. Best of luck with your journey into the world of FAST!

FAST ESP Product Guide: http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/4/8/1483939B-15B8-4DD3-B06D-204D03EC8A1E/Fast_ESP_Prod_Guide.pdf

ESP SDK Package: http://connect.microsoft.com/fastsearch (at least, this KB article gave that link)