MSDE and Full Text Search Catalog

Hi there,
First off: I know that MSDE can't handle Full Text Catalogs.

Now I'd like to know if someone knows about a product or method which I could use that would give me the same result and work with MSDE.

The reason I ask is the following:
We have developed an Intranet application based upon MS Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 for Document Management purposes. Every Document has about 20 customized Properties which can be set. We do have an extensive interface for searching these documents
Now every user can have his "Favorite Documents" in a personal location.
What we are doing now is a "Local" version of this application. It will not allow documents to be modifed and will export the Users Favorites to his personal Computer.
For the moment we store everything (including the documents themselves) in a local MSDE Database.
Now we were recently asked to allow the user to search these local documents. Or at least search for documents with specific properties(i.e. no content indexing needed)

However I don't know how to go about this.

The structure I have for the DB is following

tblFiles
FileGUID FileName
1 Doc1
2 Doc2

tblProperties
PropertyGUID PropertyName
1 Name
2 Author

tblFileProperties
FileGUID PropertyGUID Value
1 1 Test Document.doc
1 2 John Smith
2 1 Dcoument for testing.xls
2 2 John Doe

Now you get the idea

We want to user to be able to specify search criteria for multiple properties
e.g. return every Document where Author Like 'John' and Name Like 'Document'
Preferably we should also be able to use wildcars. But that is not abolutely necessary for the moment.

Now I guess to achieve this I'd need a full text Search Catalog on tblFileProperties.Value, but I'm not even sure about that.

Any help please

RizziManIf your documents are in TEXT you can still search for them using SELECT and XML in SQL Server, the search will just be longer because SQL Server creates an Arithmetic pointer to the file. Full Text is Microsoft Proprietry technology that includes the search with CONTAINS and other key words. Full Text requires Microsoft Catalog to be populated before searches because it is not fully integrated into SQL Server, if the catalog is not populated your search will be empty. If your named concurrent users are less than 75 you can implement the Premium Small business Server 2003 and use the SQL Server that comes with it. Hope this helps.

Kind regards,
Gift Peddie|||I'm gonna have a look at what you suggested using SELECT and XML. (btw, the document content don't even need to be indexed. Only the Properties. But that should work the same way I guess)

The point is: this will be a local application with only 1 concurrent user. We do have SQL Server with Full Text Calatlog Licenses on a few servers running. But this is supposed to work on peoples Laptop when they are not connected to our company network. So I can only work with free software here as the management won't agree on buying any licenses.

Anyway, thank you for the help

Anyone else?

MSDE 2000 Release A and Windows Installer

I am currently writing an installer for our product, which needs to incorporate MSDE 2000.
Previous versions of the MSDE install included merge modules (.msm files) that could be incorporated straight into a Windows Installer .msi file. However, the latest version (Release A) does not include the merge modules, and to top that, also states tha
t "Desktop Engine does not support nested installations. You must not call an .msi file from within another .msi file".
My questions are:
- How are we supposed to install MSDE when we are distributing .msi files? We need .msi functionality for other components of our install, so using a non-Windows Installer technology is not an option. Do we need to ask our users to install MSDE separat
ely (ouch)?
- Why did the merge modules disappear? I thought that these were the Microsoft-sanctioned method for installing runtime components...
- Are there any other options - we want to distribute a single file, and we really don't want to have to mix and match .msi and other setup technologies...
Marc Durdin
Software for Specialists
Hi Andy,
Thanks for the comment. However, this page is not up to date. It recommends using the merge modules... which are not supported any more by Microsoft (and are not even included in the latest release of MSDE). Any other suggestions?
Regards,
Marc

MSDE > SQL Express

We have a product on the market, with 100k or so installs that use MSDE as its database (desktop application in .net). Our number 1 complaint is massive installation problems with MSDE.

Now, we are stuck a bit - first, we need to release a Vista Compatible version - which means no MSDE. We also need to migrate users from MSDE to SQL Express, with no data loss (we deal with financial information, and people tend to have zero tolerance for data loss here).

So, I have large scale reservations for two reasons - first, Microsoft's track record in supporting and making MSDE in the past has not been stellar.

With that said - are the multiple installation failure issues fixed in SQL Express? Did MS make the effort to get SQL Express to install on Win2k/XP/Vista improved? Are their benchmark figures out there regarding SQL Express install failure rates?

Additionally, can I get some information regarding MSDE to SQL Express upgrades done during for existing customers?

jason

Hi Jason,

Great strides have been made in installation for SQL Express and it is much better than MSDE. This is not to say there are no issues, a quick search of this forum will confirm that there are, but I have not seen the kind of wholesale failures that were common with MSDE. I think SQL Express is way better for install than MSDE.

I don't know of anyone that tracks benchmarks such as you describe, sorry. I can point you to an article that we have that describes best practices for upgrading from MSDE to SQL Express, you can find it here. I have confidence that our upgrade procedure will not harm or lose our data since your database files are just left in place and then attached once the new server is installed, but I would be remise to not remind you that you should take responsibility for protecting your own important data.

I'd say that it's critical to backup your databases as a first step of any migration process. Additionally, you may want to consider doing a side by side upgrade in stead of in place to give you maximum control. During a side by side upgrade, you manually move your databases, so you can choose to use a copy (leaving the original safe) or even migrate your data by restoring a backup rather than using the original mdf. One thing to remember, once the database is converted to SQL 2005, it can't go back to 2000 format. If you are concerned that you might want to roll back the migration, you need to ensure that you keep a copy of the 2000 format database around until migration is complete.

Mike