Importing to a Database

Normally, items in your search database come from the robot. You can also import databases of existing items, either from other Portal Server Search servers, from iPlanet Web Servers or Netscape^TM Enterprise Servers, or from databases generated from other sources. Importing existing databases of RDs instead of sending the robot to create them anew helps reduce the amount of network traffic. Doing so also enables large indexing efforts to be completed more quickly by breaking the effort down into smaller parts. If the central database is physically distant from the servers being indexed, it can be helpful to generate the RDs locally and periodically import the remote databases to the central database.

The search server uses import agents to import RDs from another server or from a database. An import agent is a process that retrieves a number of RDs from an external source and merges that information into a local database.

Before you can import a database, you must create an import agent. Once an agent is created, you can start the import process immediately or schedule a time to run the import process on a regular basis.