Querying index server catalog on network

Question

I have a website that is running on windows 2000 and sql 2000. The application and the db resides on the same server.

The site has a search feature that is a combination of dbsearch and pdf search. for the pdf search i created a linked server that points to index server to do the pdf search. Wrote a stored proc that will combine both the db search and the pdf search.

Now the problem is, we are moving to windows 2008 application server and sql server 2008 db server on separate servers.

Is it possible to query the index catalog on the application server from the db server? or is there any smart way to combine file search and db search and give faster results?

thanks

-Vivek