FAST Search, an exploration

We are standing up a SharePoint 2010 site with FAST search. I have quite a bit of experience with the Google Search Appliance (GSA), but little with FAST. One of the aspects that I will have to get into is the fine tuning of search to achieve goodness. Goodness for search appears to be defined as:

I want to see the content I intended no matter what I put into the search query.

The urgency to achieve this desired result varies directly with the status of the person performing the search. That is the urgency to achieve the desired result is greatest for executives and important external participants.

OK, I am being a bit cynical with the statements above, but I mean it to point out that, not only do we need to understand and classify the content that we are displaying, we need to understand the thinking of the audiences are are targeting -- and some audiences are more important than others. The balance of these factors mean added complexity and continuing efforts to achieve the desired results.

FAST appears to have the complexity to be able to achieve at least part of the goal. That is, we have the tools in the toolbox that are needed to be able to tune the search engine to display the results. We just need the knowledge and, in the case of a very dynamic website, the continuing examination and fine tuning to continue to achieve the desired results.

One interesting aspect of tuning FAST is that it appears much of the tuning is done through PowerShell. This can be disconcerting for the business user who may have to rely on IT resources to actually achieve the desired result and continue to correct for changes in the content and thinking of the participants.

The fine tuning appears to involve many aspects of search including crawling, indexing, and query tuning. Some of the features that are desired require that no only is the search tuned, but the web parts are fine tuned on the results pages to achieve a user experience which displays the results in a manner that is friendly and meaningful.

As we work through out FAST experience, I will record my thoughts and findings here. I hope that FAST experts will join in some conversation to improve the results of our efforts. More later . . .