When do you set "Index this resource" on IIS6?

Question

When setting up a Home Directory on IIS6 properties for a web site there's an option to "Index this resource" which is checked on by default.

Microsoft's site says:

Grant this permission to allow Microsoft Indexing Service to include this folder in a full-text index of the Web site. When you grant this permission, users can perform queries on this resource.

Can someone give me more information on when you would check this option on? What sort of queries would a user perform on this resource? What are the pro's and con's of having this set to on/off for a web site?

Answer 1

This is for using the indexing service which used to drive the Search. I don't think anyone uses this anymore. It's pretty intensive against the HD. Check to see if the indexing service is even enabled on your server. We would disable by default.

If you open the indexing service mmc there will be a system and a web scope. Checking this box would add the web site to the web scope. If you were writing your own search algorithm, you would write a search query against the Web scope. Since it's 2008, you will use Google.

Answer 2

Windows index service continuously extracts contents from files (for which an appropriate IFilter is installed) under a specified directory and constructs an indexed catalog to facilitate efficient and rapid searching.

When you set "Index this resource" on IIS 6 and Windows Index Service is running, the service adds the actual physical path of the website/virtual directory/directory/sub-directory to the list of directories to be indexed in the Web catalog and the service starts to index the files.

There are various ways to interact programmatically with the Windows Index Service to search the indexed files/contents; such as OLE DB Provider, Query Helper & Others....

Set Option On: When

• Custom searching is to be performed through Windows Index Service
• Web Site/Directory contains files which will be searched.

Set Option Off: When

• Custom searches won't use Windows Index Service.

Windows Index Service continuously indexs contents of sites/directories which have the option turned on and this can result in performance issues. It's recommended to turn the option off on site/s which don't use Microsoft Index Services.

Note: Windows Index Service is disabled by default on Windows Server 2003.