Federated Query Server

Features

OpenText Federated Query Server provides a single access point, using a single search format, to simultaneously query multiple content repositories

The following sections describe the functionality of the Federated Query Server product in more detail.

Unification of Repositories

Federated Query Server routes queries simultaneously to multiple HTTP-compatible content repositories, including:

• General purpose Web search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo
• Search engines of social media and content-oriented Web sites, such as Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube
• Web-enabled Intranet repositories, such as Lotus Notes, Microsoft SharePoint Server and Novell GroupWise
• OpenText products, such as Content Server (formerly Livelink), Media Management (formerly Artesia DAM), Discovery Server (formerly BRS/Search) and Collections Server (formerly BASIS)

With a single query, users gain access to a wide range of valuable information from both inside and outside the organization.

Configurable Query Options

Federated Query Server automatically translates the user's query into the appropriate syntax for each content repository, eliminating the need to learn multiple query languages. Boolean, proximity, wildcard, keyword, metadata and fielded queries are all supported.

The query syntax used with Federated Query Server is defined by the administrator, who can choose to develop a new standard or adopt an existing standard that is already familiar to end users.

The administrator can also fully customize the interface through which end users specify query parameters, creating unique interfaces for different classes of users.

Configurable Result Listings

Federated Query Server formats results from multiple repositories to conform to a single standard specified by the administrator.

The result format can be adopted from an existing portal or content repository, or customized to meet an organization's individual requirements, or created specifically for further processing or formatting (e.g. XML).

Search terms can be highlighted, even if the content repository does not return highlighting information.

Sorted, Merged & Clustered Results

Federated Query Server provides a number of features to enhance search results:

• Results can be sorted by any element of a result (for example, score, date, author, etc)
• Duplicate results from different content repositories can be merged to eliminate repeat listings
• Customizable ranking algorithms can be applied to results, to either modify relevance scores returned by a content repository or assign relevance scores to results from content repositories without ranking capabilities
• Results sharing the same content or location can be grouped together to form clusters, helping users find the information most pertinent to their query

Authentication & Security

Federated Query Server has support for accessing content repositories that require the following forms of authentication:

• Web form log-in
• Static HTTP authentication - Basic, NTLM or Kerberos
• Delegated HTTP authentication
• Cookies generated by SSO (single sign-on) software
• User impersonation

Federated Query Server also supports access to HTTPS content repositories, either directly or via a proxy server using SSL tunneling.

Integration with Browsers & Operating Systems

Federated Query Server ships with OpenSearch compliant RSS and Atom interfaces. The OpenSearch description document can be used to directly integrate Federated Query Server with the search bar of a browser (e.g. Google Chrome), an operating system (e.g. Windows 7), or any other OpenSearch client (e.g. SharePoint). This provides a simple way to provide access from interfaces that are already in use.

Administration

Federated Query Server ships with a user-friendly Windows configuration tool with built in wizards to perform most administration tasks.

Summary

Federated Query Server enables users to submit a single query to multiple information sources and returns a unified and sorted set of results.

Benefits
Simpler queries	Extends a search across multiple content repositories, allowing users to quickly and easily find information that would otherwise require greater expertise and more time
Quality results	Helps users find the information most pertinent to their query by conceptually clustering the results - users can save time by restricting their viewing to only those groups of results relevant to their query

Features
Ease of administration	User-friendly configuration tool Wizard for adding new content repositories, and modifying existing ones Preset configurations for OpenText products A content repository URL can be extracted from an existing HTML search form or OpenSearch description document Preset parsing rules for RSS and Atom
Ease of integration	Can act as an OpenSearch server - search from your browser, from Windows, or from any other OpenSearch client, with no integration work Is an OpenSearch client - built in support for reading OpenSearch description documents, and parsing RSS and Atom Can act as middleware - for example, search a combination of XML/HTML/JSON repositories, and deliver XML to a client Web application
Search multiple repositories	Parallel searching across multiple Internet and Intranet repositories and indexes Query operator translation and automatic degradation Support for keyword and Boolean queries, including wildcards and proximity Support for metadata queries, including negative field qualification and numeric ranges Progress reporting during a query Support for multiple URLs per repository, including ability to optionally skip and repeat URLs
Display results from multiple repositories	Aggregation of results into a single page Results sorted into a single list, or grouped according to repository Duplicate result removal, with configurable result comparisons Results restyled into a common format Generation of table of contents for a result page Pagination of results, allowing multiple pages of results to be retrieved from each repository Modification of result URLs
Added value to results	Clustering of results according to their content, location, or both Modification of result relevance scores Calculation or estimation of result relevance scores Search term highlighting
End user control	Multiple full-text query boxes, with default and conjunctive operators, and field qualification Multiple metadata query boxes, with numeric range operators Most query and display options selectable from the search page
High configurability	Multiple user interfaces, selectable from the search page Results page can be displayed as HTML, XML, CSV, or virtually any other format Configurable error messages
Conformance to Web standards	Support for Basic, NTLM, Kerberos and delegated HTTP authentication Support for Web form authentication Cookies can be passed to and from Intranet repositories Ability to access secure servers using SSL or TLS Compatible with proxy servers and reverse proxy servers Support for HTTP redirection Generation of usage logs Compatible with load balancers

System Requirements

Federated Query Server is currently supported on Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Solaris 9+ (SPARC), HP-UX 11.23+ (Itanium) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6+ (x86/x64). In addition, the configuration tool is supported on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. The following hardware and software are required.

Hardware & Software
Windows	x86 or x64 CPU 64MB free RAM 24MB free disk space XGA graphics (1024x768) CGI-compatible Web server
Solaris	SPARC V9 CPU 64MB free RAM 20MB free disk space CGI-compatible Web server
HP-UX	Itanium CPU 64MB free RAM 20MB free disk space CGI-compatible Web server
Red Hat Linux	x86 or x64 CPU 64MB free RAM 20MB free disk space CGI-compatible Web server