On a recent project we worked on, we leveraged search pretty heavily, using it to do all the cross-site aggregation heavy lifting. As a result we got a lot of use out of the SearchCoder tool we released last year. We are at the point now where we are looking at driving out additional performance improvements, and to do that we decided to extend the SearchCoder with some new features.
Support For The Search Web Service
The initial support is pretty basic, with the intention being that it provides you with a quick way to execute a Full Text SQL query against the SharePoint Web Service.
The functionality that helps you build the query graphically still needs an OM connection to a SharePoint Site, but once you have that query you can issue it via the OM or the Web Service.
The nice bit about using the Web Service is that it means that you can, with care, test various queries against the production Query Servers and Indexes. Important as often the only place you have such a big index is in production.
Performance Instrumentation
Included in the tool is a quick and dirty way to get an average query time for a specific query. Basically, you create your query, test that its working, specify over how many iterations you would like to average, and click a button. The result is something like this:
Its pretty basic, but it does the job. I’m going to do a write up on some of the very interesting results we have seen, so stay tuned (pun intended!)
Change Log Report
This version also includes a first step into providing a way to expose the SharePoint Search Change Log. The Change Log is the list used by the SharePoint indexer to determine just what work it should do. All you do is enter in a number of minutes, and it will tell you which items the indexer will think has changed in that period.
This need some serious extension to really be useful, but its a start!