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Microsoft Index Server
Release Notes

Visit the Index Server Home Page
Sample Files
Installing Index Server
Support for Microsoft Internet News Service
Changes to the Documentation
Removing Index Server


Thank you for downloading and installing Microsoft® Index Server version 1.1 for Windows NT® Server. This file lists the changes made to Index Server since its beta release. There are also several installation items to note. These notes are mainly for users who have a previous version of Index Server installed on their computers and are upgrading to the latest version. These changes and notes are summarized on this page.


To TopVisit the Index Server Home Page

For more information about Index Server and related features, see the home page at the following address:

http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/search


To TopSample Files

The sample files (such as Query.htm) were replaced. If you modified any of the sample files and did not move or rename them, they were overwritten.


To TopInstalling Index Server

Installing Index Server will reset the registry settings to their defaults. If you have modified the registry settings for Index Server, you will have to reset the values to your preferences after installation.


To TopSupport for Microsoft Internet News Service

If Microsoft Internet News Server has been installed on a server along with Index Server version 1.1, then news articles can be indexed. You can find additional sample query forms written for a news server on the Index Server home page.

The virtual paths produced by Internet Information Server (IIS) convert the dot between newsgroup components to a slash. For example:

News GroupConverted To
comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy/comp/os/ms-windows/advocacy

Note   The path /comp/os/ms-windows/advocacy is not a valid virtual path in IIS.

New Default Properties

The followingproperties are always available for queries to newsgroups.

Friendly NameDatatypeProperty
NewsGroupDBTYPE_WSTR | DBTYPE_BYREFNewsgroup to which article was posted.
NewsGroupsDBTYPE_WSTR | DBTYPE_BYREFFull set of newsgroups to which article was cross-posted.
NewsSubjectDBTYPE_WSTR | DBTYPE_BYREFSubject line of news article.
NewsFromDBTYPE_WSTR | DBTYPE_BYREFAuthor of news article.
NewsMsgIdDBTYPE_WSTR | DBTYPE_BYREFGlobally unique message ID of article.

Special Requirement for Hit Highlighting

The hit highlighter (Webhits.exe) is a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) application that must be stored in a valid virtual path with Execute permission. If you want to highlight hits in news articles, add virtual roots, each beginning with /$CiNews and corresponding to every root in the news server. Make sure that virtual roots in IIS beginning with /$CiNews have both Read and Execute permissions turned off.

For example, if rec.sports.* was being stored at C:\Sports and the default (home) news root was C:\Inetpub\Nntproot, two new virtual roots would be added. /$CiNews/rec/sports=D:\Sports and /$CiNews=C:\Inetpub\Nntproot. The Read and Execute permissions are not enabled for these virtual roots.

When running Webhits.exe, be sure to put the virtual path /$CiNews/<%vpath%> into the .htx file in the call to Webhits.exe.

Note   The hit highlighter does not check Read permissions for virtual roots beginning with /$CiNews/.

NNTP Virtual Roots with UNC Shares

If a virtual root on a news server points to a universal naming convention (UNC) share, administrators must add a virtual root in IIS. The Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) virtual root must be prepended with /$CiNews to highlight the news articles stored on that UNC share by using Webhits.

Example

Assume the following in the news server setup:

In IIS, set up a virtual root with the following properties:


Important   Be sure to turn off the Read and Execute permissions on virtual roots prepended with /$CiNews.


To TopChanges to the Documentation

This section details changes and additions to the existing documentation.

Basic Administration

In the sections that discuss the variables PROOT_virtual and INDEX_virtual root, (Enabling Indexing of a Virtual Root and Forcing a Scan of a Virtual Root), if the root is a news root, these variables are PROOT_NNTP_virtual and INDEX_NNTP_virtual root.

List of Virtual Roots

You can determine the type of a virtual root while making the VIRTUAL_ROOTS query. Look at the value of the special property StorageType—(DBTYPE_UI4) = b725f130-47ef-101a-a5f1-02608c9eebac 4. The value 0 identifies a Web root. The value 1 identifies a news root.

Error Messages

This section lists addtions and corrections to the Index Server error messages, contained on the Error Messages page.

Event Log Messages

MessageExplanation
Account user-id does not have interactive logon privilege on this computer. You can give user-id interactive logon privilege on this computer using the user manager adminstrative tool.The specified does not have interactive logon permisson on the computer running Index Server. Give the user-id interactive logon privilege through the User Manager for Domains.

Results Page

At the bottom of a results page, you may periodically see the following message:

MessageExplanation
The index is out of date.Files have been modified since the last time the scope of your query was indexed. Whenever files in a scope are modifed, Index Server re-indexes them automatically whenever system resources are available. If you see this message at the bottom of a results page, wait a few minutes and retry your query.

Webhits Errors

MessageExplanation
There are too many copies of hit highlighter running. Please try later.There are more simultaneous instances of Webhits than the maximum number set in the MaxRunningWebhits registry key. Try executing your query later, when the server is less busy.
Hit highlighting took too long to execute and was timed out.Webhits has taken longer than the allotted time to process a document, and the server has timed out. The document may be too big or it may be corrupted. Ask the administrator to check the document.

Virtual Roots

MessageExplanation
Added virtual root <root> to index.The message “Mapped to <path>” is added to the event log when a virtual root is indexed.
Removed virtual root <root> from index.This message is written to the event log when a virtual root is deleted from the index.
Added scope <path> to index.This message is added to the event log when a new physical scope is indexed.
Removed scope <path> from index.This message is written to the event log when a new physical scope is deleted from the index.

Note   When virtual roots point to positions below each other, adding and removing virtual roots may have no effect on the physical scopes in the index. For example, some sites such as www.microsoft.com are branded with virtual roots in a marketing sense of the word. So if a user wants information on Windows NT Server, the user follows the path http://www.microsoft.com/NTServer, whcn http://www.microsoft.com/products/backoffice/ntserver is also a valid path. In this example, even if you removed the lower virtual root (/NTServer), the pages will still be indexed because they are include in another path, http://www.microsoft.com/products/backoffice/ntserver in this example.

Filtering

HTML Filter

The HTML filter will not index any of the contents or properties of an HTML file if the HTML file contains the following meta tag:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

A Webmaster can add this meta tag to selectively avoid indexing certain HTML files.

If an HTML file contains the following meta tag, the content field specifies the language code:

<meta name="ms.locale" content="EN">

The file is filtered by the language resources for that particular language (if available).

The content field in the tag can also specify the locale by a decimal number, such as 1033, which is the locale ID for U.S. English.

Some meta tag properties are mapped onto the Microsoft® Office property sets to allow users to mark HTML pages with the same properties in the Office property set. The list of properties that are mapped are:

PropertyMapped to
<meta name="author" content="ruth">The author property in the summary information property set.
<meta name="subject" content="word processing">The subject property in the summary information property set.
<meta name="keywords" content="fonts, serif">The keyword property in the summary information property set.
<meta name="ms.category" content="fiction">The category property in the document summary information property set.

Hit Highlighting

In the “Webhits Parameters” section, the paragraph under the CiQueryFile parameter should say virtual path instead of physical path. The paragraph should read as follows:

Format: CiQueryFile=Virtual path

This parameter is optional. If it is passed, CiQueryFile specifies the virtual path of the .idq file containing the [Names] section describing the custom properties.You must pass this parameter for all queries involving custom properties. If you try to hit-highlight a document with a query that has a custom property and you do not specify the appropriate .idq file, the error message “No such property” will be displayed.

The following parameters have been added to the “Webhits Parameters” section:

CiBeginHilite
CiEndHilite
Format: CiBeginHilite=BeginTags&CiEndHilite=EndTags
These two parameters together customize highlighted words in the query results. If you specify these tags, Index Server ignores all other formatting parameters CiBold, CiHiliteColor, CiItalic, and so on.

Important   You must match the BeginTags and EndTags with correct HTML formating. Failure to do so will produce unpredictable results. When you specify these parameters in the query template file (.htx file), you must properly escape the tags. For example:

CiBeginHilite=<%escapeURL <font color="#FF0000"><em>%>&CiEndHilite=<%escapeURL </em></font> %>


The two parameters together in the above example make the highlighted words in the search results appear in red italics.

CiHiliteType
Format: CiHiliteType=[Full|Summary]
This parameter is optional. If not specified, Summary is the default.

Summary   The summary feature can generate small excerpts of a document around the words that match the query specification.

Full   When full highlighting is chosen as the option, the whole document is highlighted and returned. Note that this does not do full-fidelity highlighting. Only the text part of the document is extracted and highlighted. This option is mainly for documents that contain mostly text. It also tags the hits with bookmarks, allowing navigation between the hits. The first hit is bookmarked as #CiTag0 and the top of the generated document is tagged as #CiTag-1. To help in navigation, double-angle bracket tags (<< and >>) surround each hit. Click the << tag to go to the previous hit, and click the >> tag to go to the next hit.

CiLocale
Format: CiLocale =LocaleString
This parameter is optional. If specified, the given locale will be used to interpret the CiRestriction string. Output will also be generated using this locale. Valid values for the CiLocale string are in the “Variables in .idq and .htx Files” page.

CiMaxLineLength
Format: CiMaxLineLength=Number
This parameter is optional. When this parameter is specified, Webhits preformats the text with the <pre> and </pre> HTML tags. If a line length exceeds the specified number, it is broken at the next word boundary. This option works best when full hit-highlighting is chosen.

CiTemplateFile
Format: CiTemplateFile=Virtual path
This parameter is optional, but highly recommended. It specifies the virtual path of the template file that generates Webhits output. The recommended extension for a Webhits template file is .htw. This template file lets you customize the output like the template files used for queries. It has a header section, a detail section, and a footer section. The template file format used by Webhits is same as the template file for queries, with the following differences:

The only replaceable parameters allowed are <%CiUrl%>, <%CiRestriction%>, <%CiUserParam1 %>, <%CiUserParam2>, and so on up to <%CiUserParam10%>.

There is no support for if-then-else processing.

The detail section is used only as a placeholder for hit-highlighting data. In the current release, Webhits ignores the text between <%BeginDetail%> and <%EndDetail%>. It is, however, important to specify <%BeginDetail%> and <%EndDetail%>.

EscapeHTML, EscapeURL, and EscapeRAW are supported as in query template files.

Sample template files for Webhits output formatting are included in the installed samples as:

/Scripts/Samples/Search/Qfullhit.htw
/Scripts/Samples/Search/Qsumrhit.htw

CiUrl   The virtual path of the document being highlighted replaces this parameter.

CiRestriction   The value specified for Webhits in the CiRestriction parameter replaces this parameter.

CiUserParamNumber   Where Number is a number from 1 to 10. The corresponding value specified in the CiUserParamNumber parameter replaces this parameter.

CiUserParamNumber
Format: CiUserParamNumber=value, where value can be any non-null string.
CiUserParamNumber is any parameter that can be specified for Webhits and that can be replaced in CiTemplateFile. In CiUserParamNumber, Number is any number from 1 to 10. For example, CiUserParam1, CiUserParam3, CiUserParam5, and so on.

In the Files Used section, the text should read as follows:

Webhits installs the following files:

/Scripts/Samples/Search/Webhits.exe
/Scripts/Samples/Search/Queryhit.htx
/Scripts/Samples/Search/Queryhit.idq
/Scripts/Samples/Search/QSumrhit.htw
/Scripts/Samples/Search/QFullhit.htw
/Samples/Search/Queryhit.htm

All files above demonstrate summary and full-text hit-highlighting.

Internet Data Query Files

The following paragraphs have been added to the Names Section.

The HTML filter emits scripting code embedded in an HTML page as a script property with the GUID 31F400A0-FD07-11CF-B9BD-00AA003DB18E. The property name of the script is specified by the language field of the script tag, for example:

<script language="vbscript">

In this example, the property name is vbscript. If no language field is specified, then the language field of an earlier script tag in the HTML page is used. If no earlier script tag is specified, then the property name defaults to javascript. The GUID for the script property is a registry parameter located at

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
 \System
  \CurrentControlSet
   \Control\HtmlFilter
    \ScriptTagClsid

The following example shows you how to name a custom property for Microsoft Office by adding globally unique identifier (GUID) to the Names section of the Internet Data Query (.idq) file:

Custom_Text ( DBTYPE_STR|DBTYPE_BYREF ) = D5CDD505-2E9C-101B-9397-08002B2CF9AE "Custom_Text"

In this example, Custom_Text can be any string. The value of Custom_Text does not have to be the same at the beginning and end of the line. The one at the beginning is the friendly name, and the one at the end (in quotation marks) is the Microsoft Office property name.

Query Language

In the “Boolean and Proximity Operators” section, the following note adds important information about the NEAR operator:

Note   The NEAR operator can be applied only to words or phrases.

Some documented properties are unavailable. The documentation incorrectly states that the following property names can be used:

DocCategory
DocCompany
DocManager

To use these properties, you must list them in a [Names] section in the .idq file. To use these properties in a restriction, sort specification, or as a retrieved column, you have to add the following definitions to the .idq file:

[Names]
#Office document properties which are not in the standard list
DocCategory ( DBTYPE_STR ) = D5CDD502-2E9C-101B-9397-08002B2CF9AE 0x2
DocManager ( DBTYPE_STR ) = D5CDD502-2E9C-101B-9397-08002B2CF9AE 0xE
DocCompany ( DBTYPE_STR ) = D5CDD502-2E9C-101B-9397-08002B2CF9AE 0xF

Registry Parameters

All keys are in the following path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
\SYSTEM
 \CurrentControlSet
  \Control
   \contentindex

The following parameters have been added:

CiCatalogFlags REG_DWORD
Default: 0
Range: 0 - 2
Controls Index Server behavior based on certain flags. Set the value 1 to turn off notifications on all remote UNC paths. Set this flag if Index Server is configured to index documents on a wide area network (WAN) over slow links. Set the value to 2 to turn off notifications on all local paths. When either of these flags is set, Index Server triggers periodic scans for the paths for which notifications have been disabled. The registry parameter ForcedNetPathScanInterval controls the frequency of paths.

MasterMergeCheckpointInterval REG_DWORD
Units: Kilobytes
Default: 256
Range: 256 - 4096
Specifies the interval after which a new index is flushed as a master merge proceeds.

MaxRunningWebhits REG_DWORD
Default: 20
Range: 1 - 200
Specifies the maximum number of concurrent instances of Webhits. When this value is exceeded, the following error message is generated, and the user is asked to try again later. Increase this value for computers with more memory or processors.

MaxShadowFreeForceMerge REG_DWORD
Units: Percentage of free disk space
Default: 20
Range: 5 - 4,000,000,000
Specifies the percentage of free disk space occupied by shadow indexes on a catalog drive. If this percentage exceeds the value set for this parameter and if the total free disk space falls below the minimum set in the MinDiskFreeForceMerge, a master merge begins. For example, if this parameter is set to 500, the amount of free disk space is 10 megabytes and the amount of space occupied by shadow indexes is 40 megabytes, no master merge takes place (40*100/10 is less than 500). However, if the value of this parameter is set to 300, a master merge begins because 40*100/10 is greater than 300.

MaxWebhitsCpuTime REG_DWORD
Units: Seconds
Default: 30
Range: 5 - 7200
Specifies the timeout value for Webhits in CPU seconds. If Webhits does not process a document in the stipulated amount of time, it will return an error message that the allowed time has been exceeded.

Variables in .idq and .htx Files

The following variables have been added as read-only variables for .htx files.

Variable NameMeaning
CiVersionMajorThe major version of Index Server.
CiVersionMinorThe minor version of Index Server.

For other variables, see Read-Only Variables Available in .htx Files on the “Variables in .idq and .htx Files” page.


To TopRemoving Index Server

This section tells you how to delete Index Server from your computer.

To remove Index Server

  1. Stop Microsoft Internet Information Server or Microsoft Peer Web Services.

  2. Delete the following files from the %SystemRoot%\System32 directory:

    Cidaemon.exe
    Htmlfilt.dll
    Idq.dll
    Infosoft.dll
    Kppp.dll
    Kppp7.dll
    Kpw6.dll
    Kpword.dll
    Kpxl5.dll
    Qperf.dll
    Query.dll
    Sccfa.dll
    Sccfi.dll
    Sccifilt.dll
    Sccut.dll

    Noise.* (where * is one or more of dat, deu, eng, enu, esn, fra, ita, nld, sve)
    Wbcache.* (where * is one or more of deu, eng, enu, esn, fra, ita, nld, sve)
    Wbdbase.* (where * is one or more of deu, eng, enu, esn, fra, ita, nld, sve)

  3. In the registry, delete the following keys and/or values:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\contentindex
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\ContentIndex
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\ContentFilter
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\ISAPISearch
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\W3SVC\Parameters\Script Map\.ida
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\W3SVC\Parameters\Script Map\.idq

  4. Delete all Catalog.wci directories (referenced from the CiCatalog parameter of an .idq file).

  5. Through the Windows NT Explorer, delete all files pointed to by the virtual roots /Samples/Search, /Srchadm, /Scripts/Srchadm, and /Scripts/Samples/Search. Then, through the Internet Service Manager, you can optionally remove these virtual roots if they exist.

  6. (optional) Delete all references under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT to PersistentHandler, including all links to classes referenced from a PersistentHandler value.


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