To index or not to index…

When Microsoft introduced Windows 2000 Server to the world, it came with a component called Microsoft Indexing Server.  Not many applications used this functionality.  Starting with SolidWorks 2007, however, PDMWorks Workgroup 2007 gives you the option of taking advantage of this component.  Microsoft Indexing Server allows applications to have their own “index card.”  This means that it allows applications to create their own special index entries to let them search any data or vault content more quickly.  Thus, the question for you as a CAD administrator is “Do I need this?” and “How will this benefit us our engineers and users

The Good

• The main benefit of utilizing Microsoft Indexing Server is searching performance and creation of an assembly and component list when you check in or check out an assembly.  This is done by letting the PDMWorks Workgroup Server create “index cards” directories.  Thus, whenever a user would like to search for files, it doesn’t scan each record.  It now refers to the “index cards” directory and give you the answers. 
• It also creates indices of the relationships of the parents and children so that when you check in/out an assembly, it produces the list of the component model children at a faster rate.

The Bad

• I’ve noticed that if I check in a new document into the vault and I immediately do a search of that file right after, PDMWorks Workgroup cannot find the document.  This does not mean that Indexing Server does not work.  It simply means that it takes time to create the indices.  If somebody does a search while the index has not been created yet, they don’t get the desired result.
• I’ve spoken with some IT people who prefer to not install Indexing Server component since it’s an additional infrastructure to maintain.  It will also add to the hard drive space usage albeit not as significant as the actual vault data.

In my humble opinion, the magic number of records to use the Indexing Server is if you have more than a thousand or so documents in the vault, enable indexing searching in PDMWorks Workgroup.

In my next blog entry, I shall talk about enabling Indexing Server in PDMWorks Workgroup.

Note: This article comes courtesy of Gerald Go, PDM Specialist at Graphics Systems Corporation.

Comments

[Josh]

man, I remember gerald back in the smarteam training days. Tell him josh says hi! good article!