This document provides an overview of SharePoint 2013 search architecture and customization. It discusses the logical and physical search topology including components like the admin, crawler, and index. It also covers configuring search results through managed properties, query rules, display templates and refiners. The document aims to explain how to customize the search experience and leverage business connectivity services.
Crawl Component Crawls content based on what is specified in the crawl databases.
Content processing component Carries out various processes on the crawled items, such as document parsing and property mapping.
Index component It is the logical representation of an index replica.
Index partitions· -You can divide the index into discrete portions, each holding a separate part of the index. -An index partition is stored in a set of files on a disk. -The search index is the aggregation of all index
Index replicas· Each index partition holds one or more index replicas that contain the same information. -You have to provision one index component for each index replica. -To achieve fault tolerance and redundancy, create additional index replicas for each index partition and distribute the index replicas over multiple application servers.
Query processing component Analyzes and processes search queries and results.
Analytics processing component Carries out search analytics and usage analytics.
Search administration component Runs system processes that are essential to search.
Content processing component Carries out various processes on the crawled items, such as document parsing and property mapping.
Index component It is the logical representation of an index replica.
Index partitions· -You can divide the index into discrete portions, each holding a separate part of the index. -An index partition is stored in a set of files on a disk. -The search index is the aggregation of all index
Index replicas· Each index partition holds one or more index replicas that contain the same information. -You have to provision one index component for each index replica. -To achieve fault tolerance and redundancy, create additional index replicas for each index partition and distribute the index replicas over multiple application servers.
Query processing component Analyzes and processes search queries and results.
We don't use scopes anymore. We use result sources.
Result sources allow us to focus our user's results, and in doing so we can create slices, subsections of the index based on rules.
Unlike SharePoint 2010, which was entirely property based, we can also create rules based on analytics, so for instance, one of the default result sources is popular content. We can execute a query against the index to return just those results that we want to see in our result source. This is a very powerful capability of SharePoint 2013. Finally, we can perform analysis using these result sources. So, as I said, you can do popular content, you can do content created in the last five days, and any other query that you're interested in based on either properties out of the search index or analysis from the analysis system.