How to retrieve a reference to the SearchServiceApplicationProxy

Excerpt from this page:
http://dotnetmafia.sys-con.com/node/1498722/mobile

I think the new best practice will be to pass a reference to the SearchServiceApplicationProxy.  The trick of course is getting that reference.  First, you need to determine the name of your Search Service Application.  For a typical Enterprise Search installation it is called Search Service Application.  However, it can be called anything depending on how you configured SharePoint.  For FAST, it might be called something like FAST Content SSA.  Go to Central Administration –> Service Applications and take a look.

The proxy will usually have the same name as the Service Application, so in my case here the name of my proxy is Search Service Application.  Now we just can’t get a reference to the SearchServiceApplicationProxy directly.  We have to go through the SearchQueryAndSiteSettingsServiceProxy class first.  According to the SDK, the function of going through this service is to ensure queries are load balanced.  Here is how you get a reference to the query and settings proxy.  It also assumes this code is executing on one of the servers in the farm.

SearchQueryAndSiteSettingsServiceProxy settingsProxy = SPFarm.Local.ServiceProxies.GetValue<SearchQueryAndSiteSettingsServiceProxy>();

Now that we have a reference to the settings proxy, we can get a reference to the SearchServiceApplicationProxy with the name of the proxy that we saw above.  Change the name to match whatever yours is called.

SearchServiceApplicationProxy searchProxy = settingsProxy.ApplicationProxies.GetValue<SearchServiceApplicationProxy>("Search Service Application");

Now you can pass this proxy to the constructor of the KeywordQuery or FullTextSqlQuery.

Reset FAST Search Server for SharePoint (FS4SP) Index

First, need to reset the index in Central Administration / Application Management / Manage Service Applications, then click your FAST Search content SSA, then click Index Reset.

We are not done yet, we also need to manually clear the content from the content collection that our FAST Search Content Search Service Application feeds to. The default collection name is sp.

To clear a FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint content collection, log onto the server that hosts FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint and follow this procedure.

Clear the content collection

1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: You are a member of the FASTSearchAdministrators local group on the computer where FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint is installed.
   
2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.
   
3. Click Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.
   
4. Click the Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint shell.
   
5. At the Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint shell command prompt, type the following command:
   Clear-FASTSearchContentCollection -Name
   Where:
   
   • is the content collection you are about to clear.
     
6. Wait for the command to finish. This may take some time.
   
   After all of above is finished, then we can start new crawls.
   

Learning about nctrl, and disabling the FAST Search Web crawler

From Marcus Johnson - http://blog.comperiosearch.com/2011/07/learning-about-nctrl-disabling-fast-search-web-crawler/

It looks to me that stopping the web crawler stops the in progress crawling too.

How FAST Search for SharePoint Fits into SharePoint 2010 (en-US)

Some very good information, especially on how people search fits in the grand scheme of things:

How FAST Search for SharePoint Fits into SharePoint 2010 (en-US)

Get-FASTSearchContentCollection Error Message

When execute Get-FASTSearchContentCollection -Name "sp"
Get the following error message: Get-FASTSearchContentCollection : Failed to communicate with the WCF service.

I was running the PowerShell window as administrator. However I need to run the PowerShell window with FAST user account. To access "Run as different user", hold down the Shift key while right - click the "Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint".

Thanks to Corey Roth for the solution!

Modify Names of FAST Search Service Applications Databases

Modify Names of FAST Search Service Applications Databases

Using PowerShell to automate FAST Installation and Configuration:

Configuring FAST for SharePoint 2010 Using PowerShell

SharePoint: Four Tips for Index Cleaning - End User - NothingButSharePoint.com

SharePoint: Four Tips for Index Cleaning - End User - NothingButSharePoint.com

Understand, scale and monitor Crawling / Processing / Indexing in FAST Search for SharePoint

Greate blog entry on this, good read and links to other resources.

Understand, scale and monitor Crawling / Processing / Indexing in FAST Search for SharePoint by leonardocsouza

Very other helpful information on SharePoint Search, Fast Search for SharePoint too. 

SharePoint 2010 Blog - Antonio Lanaro: SharePoint 2010 Fast Search: Filter all contents w...

SharePoint 2010 Blog - Antonio Lanaro: SharePoint 2010 Fast Search: Filter all contents w...: "OBJECTIVE : To programmatically obtain the URL to access the FAST search and return contents filtered by Metadata. To enable a custom search..."

Create a Search Scope for FAST Search for SharePoint 2010

Please see "Creating a Scope in FAST Search for SharePoint 2010"

Basically, you can't use SharePoint CA to accomplish this task, you have to use PowerShell scripts.

FAST Query and FAST Content Search Service Applications in a SharePoint 2010 deployment Explained

After FAST for SharePoint 2010 (FAST4SP) is installed and configured, there are 2 search service applications associated with FAST4SP: FAST Query Search Service Application and FAST Content Search Service Application (Your search service application name could be different). It took me a while to realize the differences between those 2 service applications. The following blog entry helped me a lot learning those 2 service applications.

The two types of Search Service Applications (in a SharePoint 2010 deployment with FAST Search Server) - On The Search - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

In summary, FAST Query is used to service all search queries and crawl People content, i.e., User Profiles. So under the Search Administration page for FAST Query, there should be one and only one Content Source defined, with Start Addresses with only one entry, like sps3://hostname. Also search scopes should be defined under FAST Query service application. This blog entry demonstrates how to create a search scope in FAST Query from content source defined in FAST Content.

FAST Content is used to crawl all other content sources other than People. Out of the box under the Search Administration page of FAST Content, we should remove the entry of sps3:// from the content source's start addresses text box. Also note there is no search service application proxy for FAST Content.

Fast Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Installation and Configuration

The home page of Fast Search Server 2010 for SharePoint: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/enterprisesearch/ee441234.aspx is a must read in order to get started on this.

I won't bore you with detailed steps setting up FAST on SharePoint for a development environment since above link has many pages of detailed instructions, I will just point out some issues I ran into and the resolutions of those.

First, you can install FAST on SharePoint server. For my development environment, I have SharePoint 2010 and FAST on the same server, and databases are on a separate SQL server.

After the installation, during the configuration, If you run into error about "Username or domain is incorrect", please use full domain name, please see this post on TechNet. You can use "ping -a servername" to find out the FQDN.

After I have setup everything, I got the error message "The search request was unable to connect to the Search Service". After ensuring that the SharePoint certificate is copied to the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint query processing node, the search works like a charm.


Also I created a new site based on FAST Search Center template and made necessary changes to My Site and the Portal to ensure that SharePoint uses FAST as the search provider. Please see the bottom of this post for directions on this.

Good luck with your FAST installation and configuration.