Kit Menke's Blog

Recently I ran into a “feature” of SharePoint’s SPSite.OpenWeb() method (the no argument constructor specifically). If the OpenWeb() method is used with a URL that is not known to exist, it can result in some unexpected behavior.

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Got the following message when trying to deploy a solution file to the server:

Failed to extract the cab file in the solution.

Luckily Robert Bogue had already found the answer: we had duplicated an entry for a web part in our solution’s .ddf file. Apparently, makecab allows you to have the same file in the same location multiple times. I’m not really sure why it doesn’t just overwrite it, but in any case, the solution doesn’t know what to do with it either.

I’ve learned a couple of different things from messing with Enterprise Search and SharePoint. A lot of this has to do with the initial setup and how different crawls affect the index.

What this assumes:

• You know how to get to Central Admin and the Search Admin screens
• Any URLs below you will have to replace “centraladmin” with your own server ip
• The place where you can run incremental or full crawls is:

  http://centraladmin/ssp/admin/_layouts/listcontentsources.aspx

Metadata properties:

• In order to have more columns to search, you must add them to the “Metadata” in the ssp

  http://centraladmin/ssp/admin/_layouts/schema.aspx

• Any metadata property has a 64 character limit when querying using Enterprise Search SQL (ESSQL)
• In order for a column to show up in the Add Mapping dialog an INCREMENTAL crawl is required (column existed and just didn’t have data in… added some data to the list making sure to populate the new fields and then ran an incremental)
• Adding a Managed Property requires a FULL crawl in order to populate the data in that field

Search visibility:

• If a site has Search Visibility disabled, it will show up as a warning in the crawl log. LISTS DO NOT
• Changing a list’s Search Visibility (in advanced settings) will require a INCREMENTAL (full is not required) crawl in order to start showing up in search results

Search scopes:

• Changing an existing search scope requires you to update the scope again
  Go back to Central Admin -> ssp -> Search Settings -> Start Updating
  After clicking Update… it almost always goes from 0% to 100% after a while… no in between
• Changing scopes does not require an incremental or full crawl (you simply need to update the scope again) see above
• For a search scope, to have it include list items your scope should have a “folder” with a value like (encoded url with trailing slash):

  http://moss/sitecollection/subsite/Lists/My%20List%20Name/

Also, here is some very unhelpful microsoft documentation:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms493660.aspx

Leave a comment if you have questions!