FearFactory Posted March 31, 2008 Share Posted March 31, 2008 Trying to find a way to acces the Windows Indexing Service, same service used for QUICK searches for files and folders. Wrote a batch routine to search HD for data,and it sweeps the whole drive taking hours to complete a search and copy. If I could tap into the MS Indexing Service, I could automate the process faster without having to sweep the entire HD for matches. Any suggestions, and has anyone tapped into this service before. From what I hear its pretty locked out by MS ... but I am sure someone must have cracked it by now to access the Index Database which has the map of all files and folders for quicker data access vs sweeping an entire hard drive for matching data. For example my batch does: XCOPY c:*.doc g:*.* /s/d/y to copy all the DOCs on my system to my thumb drive, and it takes almost 3 hours to complete since it is searching all folders on the hard drive for matches through the entire tree. If I could tap into the Indexing, I could have the data copied in a few minutes depending on how many DOC files are found and their size. This tool isnt for me, since I keep my data well organized, its a tool for hunting down users data for users who drop data everywhere. and during a system rebuild is a P.I.T.A. trying to locate and backup all data befoe a wipe of the HD and rebuild. Even if there was a mod out there that tapped into the Windows Search feature to tell the search to copy all files with *.doc, *.xls, *.mdb, *.ppt ...etc that woudl be awsome over having to manually search and copy data. Any suggestions! Thanks, Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomeoneE1se Posted March 31, 2008 Share Posted March 31, 2008 There might be an API to do just that. This http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/a...362(VS.85).aspx should be a good jumping off point. I am unable to find the direct API if it exists. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iain Posted March 31, 2008 Share Posted March 31, 2008 @FearFactory - If you manage to get anywhere with this, can you post your progress please? I'm sure that it will be of interest to others. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digip Posted March 31, 2008 Share Posted March 31, 2008 Few things. The indexing service has to be running as well as turned on for the drives and folders you want to search in. If the folder path isnt part of its index catalog, it does nothing to speed up queries(form the catalog query form, not windows normal search). Open ciadv.msc from a run prompt and it will open the snapin console for the indexing query service (not the normal windows "find files or folders"). The whole process is XML based, so there is probably a way to create a webpage that you can save locally that can do the same thing(in combination with the index service running). If you open "ciadv.msc" in notepad, you can see its layout. I am not sure how this will help though since it's XML layout is for an MMC Console file, but it may be possible to do this in a webpage somehow and point to specific drives for queries. Otherwise, just use the Indexing Service in combination with the "ciadv.msc" and query it from there. As far as I know, the Indexing service uses SQL queries to search for text WITHIN a file itself and returning the results of the files it found. (dont quote me on that though): http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechn...arch.mspx#E6IAC I usually turn indexing off on all my pc's because it just becomes a memory and resource hog and actually slows down a system over time. I find that the windows "Find files and folders" works for me just fine and does not take long at all. If it does on your system, then maybe you have some other issues to look into that are slowing your results down. Here is more from Microsoft. Even they say that it can slow the system down, and is disabled by default.(Although every machine I have seen has it turned on by default). Microsoft Indexing Service Overview Indexing Service is a Microsoft Windows 2000 base service for file systems and Web servers. Formerly known as Index Server, its original function was to crawl and create a catalog of the content of Internet Information Services (IIS) Web servers. Indexing Service now creates catalogs for the contents and properties of both file systems and virtual Web sites. Target As an operating system component, Indexing Service targets the same wide range of customer scenarios that Windows targets. Indexing Service targets the user's desktop and provides an enhanced search experience for individual users over information stored on local disks. Indexing Service is exposed in Windows when you click the Search button in the Start menu, when you press CTRL+F, when you click the Search button in Windows Explorer, and when you click the search task pane in Office XP. Indexing Service exposes management and query objects that allow rapid development of custom search applications. Indexing Service catalogs can be expanded to contain information from remote file shares. Such custom applications can serve vertical applications or groups of users and can crawl information from multiple locations. Indexing Service also offers full-text search from Internet sites. Indexing Service can be used to drive custom search Web applications. In addition to query language support, Indexing Service offers a full range of programmability features targeting the custom application developer: scripting objects for query and administration, an OLE DB provider, and ADO compatibility. Search Features• Data access. Indexing Service does not include a cross-protocol gathering component. It can access any data that is available from the file system, including local file systems and shared file systems on remote computers. Indexing Service facilitates indexing of Web site content by using the IIS metabase to understand which files map to Web site content. Indexing Service then follows the information from the IIS metabase to crawl the local Web sites. Indexing Service does not use the HTTP protocol to crawl Web sites. Therefore, Indexing Service cannot crawl content that is rendered dynamically, such as ASP pages referencing a database or personalized content that changes for each user. • Filters. Indexing Service uses filters installed on the operating system, including the MIME filter for news and e-mail, the Office filter for Office documents, and the HTML filter. • Ranking. Indexing Service uses ranking algorithms based on the vector space model. Information about the specific algorithms is included in the Platform SDK. The default algorithm used is the Jaccard formula. For more information about Indexing Service's ranking formulae, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/in...xqlang_92xx.asp. • Schema support. Indexing Service provides rich, broad schema support. Using Microsoft Management Console (MMC), users can view all properties indexed from documents and can indicate which properties to stored in the property cache for fast retrieval. • Extensibility and programmability. Indexing Service provides a platform for full-text search applications. It includes a full set of programming interfaces: scripting interfaces for administration and query, and an OLE DB provider for search. More information about Indexing Service programming interfaces is available in the Platform SDK. • Query languages. Indexing Service provides rapid access to files through flexible querying language. Indexing Service supports Query Dialect 1, Query Dialect 2, and SQL full-text extensions. A list of features new to Indexing Service 3.0 (provided with Windows 2000) is available in the Platform SDK. For more information, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default....xintro_24og.asp. Indexing Service is the performance solution for custom application development to provide full-text search over content of an Internet site. It is less appropriate for applications where the data is primarily structured. Such applications should consider Microsoft SQL Server 2000. For out-of-box ease of use, or for applications that require aggregation of content from various sources and source types, SharePoint Portal Server is the appropriate choice. Indexing Service is an optional operating system component. Initial indexing of file system contents can be resource intensive and can affect desktop application performance. Therefore, Indexing Service is not enabled by default. There are probably third party programs for indexing a pc's files and searching for them quicker than windows default search and indexing service, I just havent used any of them so I can't vouch for their effectivness. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soulbleed Posted May 2, 2008 Share Posted May 2, 2008 Why not use whereis and updatedb? http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/whereis.aspx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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