i'm not certain i'll find an answer but i'd thought this would make for a good brain teaser and or be an enlightening experience or disappointment lol... basically, i need to bat an idea around...
Can i write a function for an asp page that will query my Mac OS X server while using its Spotlight feature?
when you're using a Mac to search a Mac server Spotlight will hook up so the client Mac passes the query to the server to resolve locally, or something like that. this results in VERY fast searches. to keep this in perspective my Mac server has roughly x files and folder on it.
i have about 15 different ASP pages that show everyone what they should be doing when. i'd like to add a new feature that will show a preview of that's coming down the pipe. i can get the system to do a spotlight search every time the hit the preview button but the button assumed there's a preview to view. i'd like to kick it up a notch and have the system validate that fact in advance. i realize this will put a little more overhead on the system but it well save us tones of time and is worth the effort.
so...
i can only think of two things to try...
1) have the Windows server go out and search for the preview. this would take an obscene amount of time per screen reload and incur an equally obscene amount of overhead on the network.
or
2) build a function for my ASP page to query the Mac's Spotlight feature, that would be very fast.
3) some how execute a shell to do the query and put the results into a variable within ASP.
a side note on point 3. i've done this, in concept, but would output the results to a text file on the server then read in the results and parse the data. it's rough but works. my concern about continuing on this trend is that it relies on files and mount points. it would also thrash the you know what out of the server's hard drive.
what about perl on my windows system?