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Verity

Beginner

Does Verity within ColdFusion Server versions 4.0 and 4.51 index Office 2000 documents?

No. Also, it does not support Unicode, it won't work with Acrobat 4 docs either. The alternative is to save the documents in their Office 97 formats or you might check out Webinator from Thunderstone. It will index anything including Acrobat 4 files (although that might be only the commercial version). It is free and very fast
http://www.thunderstone.com/texis/site/pages/webinator.html

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How can I implement a search engine on my site?

Create a Verity collection for your site, index it (the process of filling it with data) and then run your searches against it. Ben Forta's book has a great chapter on how to set up Verity.

Verity allows you to use boolean operators within your search. However, CF (Verity) will error on an incorrectly formed boolean search term, eg,

fast and car and and skoda --> error
fast and car and not skoda --> OK
fast and car or or skoda --> error
fast and car or not skoda --> error
fast and car not skoda and --> error
etc

So you'll have to clear up the search term before it hits Verity.

Also it is know that Verity can't handle large collection (eg greater than 50-60Mb) - the trick is to break it into smaller indexes and then query them together ... cfsearch COLLECTION="collection1,collection2"

Make sure to re-index and optimise the collections regularly to make sure the content is up to date and the collection optimised and error free.

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