This chapter provides the overview of the new and changed features in Oracle Secure Enterprise Search (Oracle SES) 11g, Release 2 (11.2.2.2), and provides pointers to additional information.
Oracle SES 11.2.2.2 includes the following new and changed features:
Oracle SES 11.2.2.2 supports open architecture, that is, an Oracle SES application can have multiple middle tier components across multiple systems. Therefore, you must ensure that the custom plug-in jar files are accessible across all the Oracle SES instance middle tiers.
In the earlier Oracle SES release, a custom plug-in jar file was required to be stored in the ses_home/search/lib/plugins directory, but this is not required in the current Oracle SES release. You can now store a custom plug-in jar file in any directory, but you must refer it using its absolute file path in the Oracle SES application. See "Extensible Crawler Plug-in Framework" for more information.
You can now use the searchctl command only when both the Oracle Database and the WebLogic Server middle tier are installed as part of the Oracle SES software installation.
The Oracle SES administrative user name is SEARCHSYS in this release. For the earlier Oracle SES release (11.1.2.2), the administrative user name is EQSYS.
Faceted Navigation: You can now use faceted navigation in query application to refine your search results based upon various categories of data. See "Configuring and Using Facets in Search Results" for more information.
Hard Sort: You can now order the search results based on the sortable search attributes. See "Configuring Sort Criteria using Sortable Attributes (Absolute Sort)" for more information.
Sitemap Crawl: You can now use Sitemap crawl for crawling Web sources efficiently. See "Sitemap Crawl" for more information.
Auto Suggest: You can now get the query suggestions as you type query terms in the search box in the query application. See "Auto Suggestions" for more information.
Personalization: You can now configure user specific preference profiles for controlling the behavior of query results in the query application. See "Personalized Search using Preference Profiles" for more information.
Push Crawl: You can now use the Push crawl mechanism for crawling and indexing documents in almost real time, that is, as soon as the documents are available in a source system. See "Understanding the Push Type Crawling Process" for more information.
Tagging: You can now use tags to classify documents into multiple categories, thus increasing the relevancy of search results. See "Configuring and Using Tags in Search Results" for more information.
Changes to the default MIME types processing for data sources: The configuration for default MIME types that are processed for each data source type has changed in this release. See "Document Types" for more information.
SharePoint 2010 support: Oracle SES now has a connector for SharePoint 2010 sources. See "Setting Up Microsoft SharePoint Sources" for more information.
Crawling of OAM-protected Web data sources support: SES now supports crawling of OAM-protected Web sites using HTTP basic authentication.
The wildcard search is not enabled by default in Oracle SES. You can enable the wildcard search in Oracle SES by configuring it using either the Administration GUI or the Administration API. See "Basic Search" for more information.
You can change the master encryption key with the searchctl rollover_key command. See "Changing the Master Encryption Key".
Backup and recovery using Administration GUI: You now cannot use the Administration GUI for the Oracle SES backup and recovery operations. See "Performing Backup and Recovery" for more information.
Disk space management: You now cannot specify the crawler log directory and the cache directory using Administration GUI and Administration API. The pre-seeded storage area entries for these directories are removed in this release. The Administration API objects for disk space management - alert, spaceCalculator, and task - are also not supported in this release.
Deploying Oracle SES instance as a portlet: You now cannot deploy Oracle SES instance as a portlet.
Changing the Oracle SES administrator password using Administration GUI: In this release, Oracle SES administrator is a WebLogic Server identity store user, and hence the administrator password can be changed only by using the standard interface provided by the WebLogic Server. You now cannot change the administrator password using the Oracle SES Administration GUI. See "Changing the Administrator Password" for more information.
Configuration files crawler.dat, search.properties, ranking.xml, drivers.properties, and QueryPlan.xml: These configuration files are not supported in this release, and you can now specify these configurations by using either the Administration GUI or the Administration API or both.
| Configuration file desupported in this release | Description | Corresponding Administration GUI page in this release | Corresponding Administration API objects in this release |
|---|---|---|---|
crawler.dat |
Crawler configuration | Global Settings - Crawler Configuration | crawlerSettings |
search.properties |
Query application configuration | Global Settings - Query UI Configuration | queryUIConfig |
ranking.xml |
Query ranking configurations | None | relevanceRanking |
drivers.properties |
Database connector configuration | Global Settings - Source Types - Database | source object of Database type |
QueryPlan.xml |
Query application configuration | Global Settings - Query UI Configuration | queryUiConfig |
The following source types are not supported in this release:
FileNet Content Engine
FileNet Image Services
Hummingbird
IBM DB2
Open Text Livelink
EMC Documentum eRoom