CRS: How to Set Up the Notification Index

• Microsoft Commercial Internet System, version 1.0

SUMMARY

This article gives detailed information about how to set up the notification index using MCIS Content Replication System (CRS) as the notification source.

MORE INFORMATION

How to set up a CRS project:

To set up a CRS project, use the CRS function ADDPROJ to add a project to the CRS list of replication projects.

For every replication project, there must be two projects set up, one on the source computer and one on the target computer, both with the same name. Obviously, CRS must be set up on both computers. The project on the source computer should indicate the source directory from which the content needs to be replicated, the destination machine name, and optionally the URL to which the content gets mapped.

The target computer (if you are replicating content to the Indexer, this would, in general, be the Indexer computer itself) should have the location of the directory where CRS should replicate the content. The destination field on the target computer may be left blank.

Use the following flags to be able to work well with the Indexer. Other flags, such as /FASTMODE and so on, may be used optionally.

SOURCE MACHINE:   CRS ADDPROJ <ProjectName> <Source Directory>

TARGET MACHINE:   CRS ADDPROJ <ProjectName> <Target Directory> /server

/AUTOMATIC flag may be used to make sure that the replication will be done automatically every time the source directory contains a new file.

CRS STARTREP <ProjectName> /automatic

How to create a Notification Index that indexes the notifications coming through from CRS:

After the two projects above have been set up, the CRS knows to notify the Indexer whenever there is new content. Now the Indexer may have multiple indexes and needs to know which index to send the notifications to. To set up a certain CRS project to notify a specific index, use the command line admin command SETNOTIFYSOURCES and give it the corresponding CRS project name.

How to build an Index: After an index has been set up to receive notifications from a certain CRS project, CRS sends notifications when there is new content. Before and after it sends a “batch” of content, it also sends a start-of-batch and end- of-batch notification. Unlike in the case of a crawl type index, a notification index does not have an end-of-crawl concept. The Indexer is constantly in a state where it is waiting for more notifications to index. So the Indexer needs to be specifically told when to build an index and propagate it to the DSS. Propagation does not happen automatically as it does in the case of a crawl index at the end-of-crawl. To force a prop or a build or an update, use the command line admin command SetTimeThrshs for prop time thresholds or SetThrshs for thresholds based on the number of Files or the Bytes indexed or the number of Batches indexed.

Because CRS explicitly sends an end-of-batch notification, it may be convenient to use that to trigger an event. For example, a user may want to build the index every time CRS replicates content but may want to propagate it to the DSS once a day. In this case, the user sets a time threshold for propagation once a day and sets build thresholds for every batch. The user has to remember to also set update thresholds, because the BUILD threshold applies only to the first time the Indexer creates an index. Every incremental batch that comes in will be built into the Index as an UPDATE.

Propagation (Internal / CRS) Propagation can be either internal prop, or the user may use CRS to prop indexes to the DSS. In the case where the user uses CRS, CRS needs to be installed on the DSS computer also. For each index propagation, two projects need to be set up, one on the Indexer and one on the DSS, both of the same name. Note that the names of the projects replicating content to the Indexer and replicating indexes to the DSS have to be distinct.

The project on the Indexer computer should indicate the DSS machine name (the destination), and the source directory (which in this case is the Index drop directory). The project on the DSS computer should indicate the target directory where CRS needs to drop the files; this is the drop directory of the corresponding index on the DSS. CRS then notifies the DSS when there are new indixes to be updated.

Keywords          : kbusage kbhowto
Version           : WinNT:1.0
Platform          : WINDOWS