Microsoft SharePoint Suggestions
March 16, 2011
Here’s a useful item for you SharePoint fans and consultants. The write up “Tools and Web Parts for SharePoint 2007 and 2010” explains Web parts. This is Microsoft speak for code gadgets. What makes the article useful is that it provides a succinct summary of how a programmer can set up SharePoint to make available more suggestions to a user for his/her query. The key point is:
The only way to add more words to the suggestion feature is using a PowerShell script to add them and run the job manually or with the script. This tool was created to handle all words of suggestions in each Search Services Applications created in SharePoint 2010.
The article has a link to download the tool, as well as an explanation and ten images to explain how to use it. Web parts or web widgets can add needed functionality. Our question, “Why isn’t a more robust suggestion tool included with SharePoint?” We think the answer is that Microsoft likes to leave third parties with opportunities to earn money from the millions of SharePoint licensees. The tactic, in my opinion, is intentional incompleteness.
Stephen E Arnold, March 15, 2011
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Is Precision and Recall Making a Comeback?
March 15, 2011
Microsoft-centric BA Insight explored these touch points of traditional information retrieval. Precision and recall have quite specific meanings to those who care about the details of figuring out which indexing method actually delivers useful results. The Web world and most organizations care not a whit about fooling around with this equation.
And recall. This is another numerical recipe that causes the procurement team’s eyes to glaze.
I was interested to read in The SharePoint and FAST Search Experts Blog’s “What is the Difference Between Precision and Recall?” This is a very basic question for determining the relevance of query search results.
Equations aside, precision is the percentage of relevant retrieved documents, and recall is the percentage of relevant documents that are retrieved. In other words, when you have a search that’s high in precision, your results list will have a large percentage of items relevant to what you typed in, but you may also be missing a lot of items in the total.
With a search that is high in recall, your results list will have more items of what you’re searching for, but will also have a lot of irrelevant items as well. The post points out that determining the usefulness of search results is actually simpler than this sounds:
“The truth is, you don’t have to calculate relevance to determine how SharePoint or FAST search implementation is performing. You can look at a much more telling KPI. Are users actually finding what they are looking for?”
The problem, in my opinion is that most enterprise search deployments lack a solid understanding of the corpus to be processed. As a result, test queries are difficult to run in a “lab-type” setting. A few random queries are close enough for horseshoes. The cost and time required to benchmark a system and then tune it for optimal precision and recall is a step usually skipped.
Kudos to BA Insight for bringing up the subject of precision and recall. My view is that the present environment for enterprise search puts more emphasis on point and click interfaces and training wheels for users who lack the time, motivation, or expertise to formulate effective queries. Even worse, the content processed by the index is usually an unexplored continent. There are more questions like “Why can’t I find that PowerPoint?” that shouts of Eureka! Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, March 15, 2011
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Protected: SharePoint Scalability Articles
March 14, 2011
Study of Enterprise Search
March 12, 2011
Research vendors, magazines owned by consulting firms, and dozens of “experts” just keep explaining why search is an issue. I find these reports fascinating because each purports to explain what enterprise search is, provide profiles to six, 12 or in this case more than 30 vendors’ products. The information involves opinion, surveys, and rehashes of previous reports. I am old enough (66) and jaded from more than three decades of laboring in the online vineyards to view these reports with a curious frame of mind and amusement.
You can get a synopsis of a longer report in the Information Week story “Go Rogue with Enterprise Search.” What? “Go Rogue?” Before I read the four part article I wondered how a key function like finding an electronic document or other information object is “rogue.” My understanding of rogue is “a deceitful or unreliable scoundrel” or the Australian horror film about tourists who are pursued by a giant crocodile.
Source: Graph Jam, where consultants often get their graphs. http://graphjam.memebase.com/upcoming/page/2531/
Search or finding needed information is too important to be slapped with the “rogue” moniker. But that is my opinion, and you may well find that “rogue” is the perfect description for what enterprise search has become in today’s marketing-centric world. Like other enterprise applications, the software system may be difficult to put under a simple, clear explanation of what happens upon installation.
Please, read the Information Week story and sign up for the full report.
Here’s my view of three key points in the write up.
First, here’s a factoid that I don’t understand.
Despite more than a decade of product development aimed at helping companies find information across their networks, a paltry 22% of the 433 business technology professionals polled in InformationWeek Analytics’ Search 2011 survey have purchased the technology. That’s down from 24% in our 2008 survey.
Protected: SharePoint: Related Searches at Last
March 10, 2011
Rosette Linguistics Platform Releases Latest Version
March 10, 2011
Basis Technology has announced its most recent release if its Rosette Linguistics Platform. Rosette is the firm’s multilingual text analytics software. Among the features of the new release is the addition of Finnish, Hebrew, Thai, and Turkish to the system’s 24 language capability. One point that we noted is that this release of Rosette sports an interesting mix of compatible search engines. According to the Basis Tech announcement:
“Bundled connectors enable applications built with Apache Lucene, Apache Solr, dtSearch Text Retrieval Engine, and LucidWorks Enterprise to incorporate advanced linguistic capabilities, including document language identification, multilingual search, entity extraction, and entity resolution.”
Several observations seem warranted. First, Basis Tech is moving beyond providing linguistic functionality. The company is pushing into text analytics and search. Second, Basis Tech is supporting commercial and open source search systems; namely, the SharePoint centric dtSearch and the Lucid Imagination’s open source solution.
The question becomes, “What is the business trajectory of Basis Tech? Will it become a competitor to the vendors with which the company has worked for many years? Will it morph into a new type of linguistic-centric analytics firm?” Stay tuned.
Cynthia Murrell, March 10, 2011
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Recommind and End to End eDiscovery
March 9, 2011
“Recommind Advances End-to-End eDiscovery” explores the value of an eDiscovery implementation that relies on a single vendor’s solution. The idea is that an organization like Cisco can standardize on Recommind’s solution and reduce costs and get a boost in efficiency.
This is an interesting idea and one that has fueled many enterprise software vendors over the years. The key point of the write up, in my opinion, was:
eDiscovery…is a term that I have seen used both narrowly and broadly. Craig [Carpenter, Recommind executive] said it was initially used in a more narrow sense to refer to the process of preserving, collecting, reviewing, analyzing and producing relevant documents after a legal process has begun. Now, it generally extends to include information management in anticipation of possible legal issues, as well as during them, while also addressing regulatory needs. This reflects a more proactive approach that is being adopted by many Recommind customers. This broader approach means that content collection is not an isolated activity but one that is integrated into an enterprise’s total information management system on an ongoing basis.
This point was followed by this passage:
Cisco is using Axcelerate to take a more proactive, strategic approach to eDiscovery. One of the drivers of increased eDiscovery costs is the explosion of enterprise content, which ironically Cisco is helping facilitate with its technology that simplifies the creation and transfer of large files, such as videos. Cisco wanted to have its own enormous stores of enterprise data easily accessible ahead of any legal issues that might arise. They also wanted greater cost containment and predictability so that legal costs do not dictate when they settle and when they fight a legal challenge. Axcelerate offers customers like Cisco a comprehensive, end-to-end platform for eDiscovery management…This greatly reduces the amount of expensive manual labor by legal experts as they decide which documents are relevant and/or privileged in a case.
We think this is a good idea and a solid example. However, in many firms there are numerous legal matters underway at any one time. Not all firms operate from a single geographical location or rely on a single law firm. As a result, some organizations have no choice but use a variety of eDiscovery systems. Costs are important but there are other considerations as well, including the time available to the legal team and the preferences of outside counsel.
One other point is that there is often more to eDiscovery than processing digital content. Companies like Brainware and ZyLAB have gained traction with their ability to manipulate hard copy documents. Both of these companies assert an end to end capability as well. To be fair, Recommind may be focusing more on a narrower definition of the work flows in a legal matter.
We find the positioning of the firm’s technology interesting and will continue to monitor the firm’s description of its technical and marketing approach to a big and growing market.
Stephen E Arnold, March 9, 2011
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Lucid Imagination and a German Open Source Summit
March 9, 2011
In case you weren’t able to make it to Lucid Imagination’s recent 2011 Solr meet-up in Germany, the company has posted a couple of presentations here. We think you will want to download these. Our favorite is Marc Krellenstein’s but you should make your own determination based on your information needs.
The offerings include a piece on search trends by Marc Krellenstein, one of Lucid’s founders. He looks at such factors as evolving challenges, best practices, and the “current competitive landscape.” He also takes a look at Google as compared to enterprise search, and weighs the strengths and weaknesses of his company’s own Lucene/Solr.
We also liked Thomas Kwiatkowski’s and Oliver Schönherr’s discussion of the online real estate site Immobilien Scout. They detailed their methodical transfer from their legacy search and data infrastructure to Solr.
You will want to check the Lucid download location. When we tried to snag the presentation form Olaf Zschiedrich, head of German-language eBay, (eBay Kleinanzeigen), it was unavailable.
Lucene/Solr continue to gain traction in the Web and enterprise search market. For more information about Lucid Imagination, navigate to www.lucidimagination.com.
Cynthia Murrell, March 9, 2011
Protected: Microsoft Fast Context Properties
March 9, 2011
IBM, OmniFind, Yahoo: What Is Next in Search?
March 8, 2011
I was pointed to this link from IBM’s website, stating that effective September 22, 2010 the Yahoo! Edition of OmniFind was withdrawn from marketing. Further, after June 30, 2011 the product support line will be nullified as well. Why the cancellation? There is an announcement letter attached, though it offers no insight. It does, however, indicate that no replacements will be made available. I tried tracking down some additional information on this free version of OmniFind and its demise, to no avail. So what happened? Was it not popular enough, too limited? Was it Lucene? Does anyone care? We do find IBM quite fascinating for a $100 billion company on Jeopardy, fighting crime in New York, and cracking medical problems with Nuance. Diverse for sure.
Our view is that with Microsoft getting cozy or at least semi-cozy with Yahoo, IBM’s OmniFind unit saw the writing on the wall. The result is that the “free” and severely limited IBM Yahoo search solution was pulled. What will take its place? Our first thought was Watson. Then we realized that Watson may be more appropriate for limited domain searching like medical information. The Jeopardy public relations stunt was a marketing play. Configuring Watson to replace Lucene based OmniFind is probably not a practical solution at this time. As a result, IBM will have to either create a new demo of its enterprise search software or just roll out the full system with some limit on its use.
In short, IBM like other big outfits seems to have some challenges in the enterprise search department just as Google, Microsoft, and Oracle do. No wonder the third party solutions are probing the enterprise for licensing deals. Stay tuned.
Sarah Rogers, March 8, 2011
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