Source Types

A collection of information is called a source. Each source has a type that identifies where the information is stored, such as on a Web site or in a database table. Oracle SES provides several built-in source types and an architecture for adding new types.

Additionally, Oracle SES provides access to more third-party data repositories than any other enterprise search engine, without requiring you to generate any additional coding. While these data sources are classified as user-defined source types, they are available as the built-in source types. This guide organizes these user-defined source types into content management sources, collaboration sources, and applications sources.

Oracle SES also provides authorization cache sources for facilitating access to secure data.

Built-in Sources 

  • Web: Represents the content on a specific Web site. Web sources facilitate maintenance crawling of specific Web sites.

  • Table: Represents content in a table or view in Oracle Database.

  • File: The set of documents that can be accessed through the file system protocol.

  • E-mail: Derives content from e-mails sent to a specific e-mail address. When Oracle SES crawls an e-mail source, it collects e-mail from all folders set up in the e-mail account, including Drafts, Sent Items, and Trash e-mails.

  • Mailing list: Derives its content from e-mails sent to a specific mailing list.

  • OracleAS Portal: Lets you search across multiple OracleAS Portal repositories, such as Web pages, files on disk, and pages in other OracleAS Portal instances.

  • Federated: Enables you to share content across multiple Oracle SES instances.

Content Management Sources 

  • EMC Documentum Content Server

  • Microsoft SharePoint 2007

  • Oracle Content Database

  • Oracle Content Database (JDBC)

  • Oracle Content Server (formerly Stellent Content Server)

You may need to install client libraries and obtain a license from the vendor for some content sources to work. For example, EMC Documentum requires installation of a compatible version of Documentum Foundation Classes (DFC), which is a Java library, on the computer running Oracle SES. Oracle SES does not ship with DFC.

Collaboration Sources 

  • EMC Documentum eRoom

  • IBM Lotus Notes

  • Microsoft Exchange

  • Microsoft NT File Systems (NTFS)

  • Oracle Calendar

  • Oracle Collaboration Suite E-Mail

Oracle Applications Sources 

  • Database

  • Oracle E-Business Suite

  • Siebel 7.8

  • Siebel 8 (Public)

  • Oracle Fusion

  • Oracle WebCenter

Authorization Sources 

  • User Authorization Cache

  • Federated User Authorization Cache

See Also:

Oracle Secure Enterprise Search Release Notes for a list of supported platforms