HOW ENTERPRISE SEARCH WORKS
An Enterprise Search engine has two components: a front end and a back end. Both work together with the search index. The index is built statically for search speed, and is updated periodically. This is unlike a database where the indexes are updated in real time when data is changed or added.
Back End:
Creating and updating the index.
Crawler - The crawler module reads and collects web pages and follows the links between them, starting with a list of initial URLs.
Document Processor - The document processor module processes web pages received from the crawler, as well as information received from databases through a 'database connector' and information from directories of files. The document processor takes the meaningful text from the documents, no matter the type or format, and adds whatever meaningful 'meta-data' it can determine, such as title or authors.
Indexer - The indexer module does the brute force work of creating and maintaining the index from the information it receives from the document processor.
Front End:
Responding to user queries.
Web server - The user's web browser fetches a web page from the web server that contains a search form. The user then enters a query and the web browser sends the request to the web server.
Query processor - The web server sends a request with the user's query to the query processor. The query processor properly formats the request and sends it to one (or more) search modules, collects the results and sends them to the web server for final formatting.
Search Engine - The search engine module receives the request from the query processor and does the actual searching inside the index that was created by the indexer.
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