Is there a way to create my own index with Windows Search?

Question

I have an application which store files (mostly Office documents) in various distant locations. I want my users to be able to search for these files based on some criteria on its own machine. I though I could use Windows Search to create an index. I've had that idea because a few years ago and to search for email in Outlook, I had to install Windows Search. So I suppose that Outlook is leveraging Windows Search to search in the PST file.

In brief, I am wondering if I can create my own index with Windows Search. Right now, I am unable to find any example online (ideally in C#). I was able to find IFilter example, but that's it.

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

G'Day Martin,

I'll point out up front that the issue is that you'll have is an index being generated per machine. Which means that every machine on the network will at some point have to index every document. All that load over your network isn't a good thing and it won't scale well if you have to add more computers.

imho, the best thing to do would be install one of the free varients of SharePoint and leverage its search abilities. This will take care of any search UI that would need to be written and OOTB it's already very good at indexing files spread over drives across a network.

Hope that helps. Cam