Author: Massimo Brini 

Many people has asked how to search inside an index server from Microsoft in order 
to show the results like a normal dataset. Here's how this can be done and some 
considerations on the use & misuse of this technology

Answer:

What is Index Server

Index Server is the web-based solution choosen by Microsoft to give its IIS server 
the ability to search and retrieve documents; as it is concieved for use with ASP 
pages, it is strongly based on COM technology and in its latest release has been 
fully integrated also with the ADO technology. 

First Steps 

I will demonstrate how to leverage on ADO in order to search the directories of the 
default catalog of the main website; to search another catalog you will just change 
an option. 
First of all you should get the Microsoft primer on Index Server at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnindex/html/msdn_i
s-intro.asphttp://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnindex/
html/msdn_is-intro.asp

With this link you wil lfind the explanation necessary to use the index server; 
using it is anyway easy. 
To start it just go inside the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and open inside 
it the services; the Microsoft Index Server Service is listed here, just right 
click to view the contextual menu and choose from it the "Start" option; if you 
want you can have it start automatically on every boot, just choose the properties 
of the listed item and choose "Auto Start" from the combo box. 
You can have more than 1 catalog to search within; top add new catalogues you 
should open the MMC for IIS and work from it, but remember that this works only 
with Nt4/W2K server, not workstation, as in Nt4/W2K wkst only 1 web site is 
allowed. 
BTW: The default catalog is named "WEB". 

ADO integration 

Let's get our feet wet... We will build a form with a text field and a db grid in 
which you will see the results of your search, just like using a normal database 
like access or sql server 
First of all open a brand new Delphi Project; add a ADQuery & ADOConncetion couple 
on the form, together with a Datasource and a DBGrid. You will also need a button 
and a Edit component. 
After these veru first steps, double click on the connectionstring property of the 
ADOCOnnection1 component; it will open the standard box; from the list of OLEDB 
Providers you should find (if your ADO is up to date) choose: 
"Microsoft OleDb Provider for Indexing Services"; with a double click you will have 
access to the advanced options, which are already setted correctly; if you want to 
change the catalogue, just modify the text in the "data source" field. Click on 
"Test connection", everything should work. 

Connect together as usual the components: 

Adoquery1 -> Adoconnection1 
Datasource1 -> Adoquery1 
DBGRID1 -> Datasource1 

I suggest of course to keep Adoconnection1.loginprompt := False and to open the 
connection asap (I made this at design time). 

and then double click on th Button you already placed on the form in the first 
step; the event handler is as follows, just copy and paste: 

1   var
2     tmp: string;
3   begin
4     if ADOQuery2.active then
5       ADOQuery2.close;
6     tmp := 'Select DocTitle, path, rank, size, Vpath, write FROM scope() WHERE
7   	 CONTAINS('ext + ''') > 0 ORDER by FileName';
8     ADOQuery2.sql.text := tmp;
9     ADOQuery2.Open;
10  end;


now you have finished: just run the application and type "note" inside the text 
field, it should show you 3/4 records inside the dbgrid, with the records showing 
the file names, path etc etc. 

Pros & Cons 

PROS 

You can integrate searched made on Index server and other data repositories like 
Access files... this can be very useful for sites based upon dynamic page creation 
technology. 
Zero administration 
Perfect for ASP objects made in Delphi and for CGIs 

CONS 

First of all there is a bug in the ADOQuery implementation by Borland, changing the 
SQL property of the ADOQUERY may result in error messages at design time; it is a 
confirmed bug, anyway everything works perfectly on runtime. So don't worry for 
this; maybe a patch will be given to Delphi user, otherwise you can try other ways 
(Using native ADO as COM objects resolve the problem) 
Second: Index Server is tigtly integrated with IIS so you can search only web 
catalogues, not particular directories of you file system. 


Component Download: http://www.dreamscapeitalia.com/download/delphi_index_server.zip