HYBRID SEARCH CONNECTOR

• US 20160321264A1
• Filed: 09/15/2015
• Published: 11/03/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 05/01/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Gvozdev, Vladimir, Kirkholt Melhus, Lars, Lland, Jrgen, Neagovici-Negoescu, Mircea, Cannerozzi, Roberta, Hammervold, Kathrine, Bergstrand, Kjetil Krogvig, Lie, Anund, Zheng, Liang, Rasch-Olsen, Niels Petter
• Granted Patent: US 11,080,284 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2228 Indexing structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/972 Access to data in other repository systems, e.g. legacy data or dynamic Web page generation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/6218 to a system of files or objects, e.g. local or distributed file system or database
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/205 Parsing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/01 Protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]

Abstract

Documents in a local computing system are parsed for indexing and sent to a cloud-based computing system. The cloud-based search service indexes documents that are parsed on the local computing system, as well as documents that reside in the cloud-based computing system. When a user launches a search, the search is executed against a single search index in the cloud-based computing system, which includes an index of content sources from both the local computing system and the cloud-based computing system.

Claims

1. A computing system, comprising:

a tenancy-based search index that stores index entries indexing content for a given tenant in a multi-tenant system;

an indexing component in a cloud-based search system, that receives parsed content, indicative of a client-side document to be indexed, and indexes the client-side document in the tenancy-based search index based on the parsed content; and

a cloud content parsing component that parses a cloud-based document for the given tenant to generate parsed content for the cloud-based document, the indexing component indexing the cloud-based document in the tenancy-based search index based on the parsed content for the cloud-based document.

2. The computing system of claim 1 and further comprising:

a security mapping component that maps security information from users of the given tenant to content indexed in the tenancy-based search index.

3. The computing system of claim 2 wherein the security mapping component maps the security information from groups in the given tenant to the content indexed in the tenancy-based search index.

4. The computing system of claim 2 and further comprising:

a query processing component that receives a search input and conducts a search against the tenancy-based search index based on the search input; and

a result output component that outputs results indicative of both client-side documents and cloud-based documents that are responsive to the search input.

5. The computing system of claim 4 and further comprising:

a result ranking component that ranks the results based on a relevancy of each result, wherein the output component outputs the results in rank order, regardless of whether the results correspond to a cloud-based document or a client-side document.

6. The computing system of claim 5 and further comprising:

a security component that applies security information to the results before the results are output by the output component.

7. The computing system of claim 1 wherein the indexing component exposes a source-independent application programming interface (API) and receives the parsed content through the source-independent API.

8. The computing system of claim 7 wherein the indexing component receives the parsed content through the source-independent API according to a source-independent schema.

9. A computing system, comprising:

a crawler component that intermittently accesses a client-side data store to identify client-side content;

a parsing component that parses the identified client-side content and generates parsed content, indicative of information for indexing the identified client-side content; and

a cloud connection system that intermittently connects to a cloud-based search service in a cloud-based computing system and calls a source-independent application programming interface (API) to push the parsed content to the cloud-based search service.

10. The computing system of claim 9 and further comprising:

a security component that generates security information to control access to the client-side content.

11. The computing system of claim 10 wherein the cloud connection system pushes the security information to the cloud-based computing system.

12. The computing system of claim 11 and further comprising:

a search system that receives a search user input and calls a search application programming interface (API) exposed by the cloud-based search service sand receives integrated results that are integrated into a single ranked list of results, regardless of whether the results are indicative of client-side content or cloud-based content.

13. The computing system of claim 9 wherein the parsing component generates the parsed content according to a source-independent schema.

14. A computer implemented method, comprising:

storing index entries indexing content for a given tenant in a multi-tenant system, in a tenancy-based search index in a cloud computing system;

receiving parsed content, indicative of a client-side document to be indexed, at the cloud computing system;

indexing the client-side document in the tenancy-based search index based on the parsed content;

parsing a cloud-based document, in the cloud computing system, for the given tenant to generate parsed content for the cloud-based document; and

indexing the cloud-based document in the tenancy-based search index based on the parsed content for the cloud-based document.

15. The computer implemented method of claim 14 and further comprising:

mapping security information from users of the given tenant to content indexed in the tenancy-based search index.

16. The computer implemented method of claim 15 wherein mapping comprises:

mapping the security information from groups in the given tenant to the content indexed in the tenancy-based search index.

17. The computer implemented method of claim 15 and further comprising:

receiving a search input at the cloud computing system;

conducting a search against the tenancy-based search index based on the search input; and

outputting results indicative of both client-side documents and cloud-based documents that are responsive to the search input.

18. The computer implemented method of claim 17 and further comprising:

ranking the results based on a relevancy of each result, wherein outputting results comprises outputting the results in rank order, regardless of whether the results correspond to a cloud-based document or a client-side document.

19. The computer implemented method of claim 18 and further comprising:

applying security information to the results before outputting the results.

20. The computer implemented method of claim 14 wherein receiving parsed content comprises:

exposing a source-independent application programming interface (API); and

receiving the parsed content through the source-independent API according to a source-independent schema.