Windows Search: Technical Resources For Developers
Windows Search shares a common architecture with a growing range of Microsoft enterprise products—enabling greater compatibility across Microsoft search products.
Extending Windows Vista search capabilities
Windows Search 4.0 is the latest version of search for Windows Vista SP1. Extend the system's search capabilities in a number of ways to provide your customers with greater value:
Use the system's search APIs to include a search box directly within your application frame or window.
Opt to query the system index and provide value-added services—such as custom data views or document flow services—on top of search results.
Use a common file dialog box to add search and file tagging support when users need to open or save files.
Put your file formats or data sources directly into the system index. You can do this using a range of technologies, including IFilters and protocol handlers, which enable those file formats or data to show up in search results.
In any of the above scenarios, writing for Windows Search for Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server is very similar—with minimal extra code needed to support all three products, since all are developed from the same foundational technology. To support thumbnails and full previews in the Search Explorer, you may want to write both a thumbnail extractor and a preview handler. To support metadata write-back to a file format in Windows Explorer, you may want to use a property handler.
Search and organization in Windows Vista
Windows Vista also offers Saved Searches—a feature that allows you to save a user created search. These saved searches are simply XML, and you can author a Saved Search in any XML editor, like Notepad, or enable your application to natively output or consume them.
Compatibility
The platform for Windows Search 4.0 is unchanged from previous versions of Windows Search. All of your applications and add-ins that worked with Windows Desktop Search 3.x and Windows Vista should work with Windows Search 4.0. The samples for Windows Search are included in the Windows Vista SP1 SDK. Documentation for developing applications that work with Windows Search can be found on MSDN.
Additional resources
Review the following developer resources for more information on extending the Windows Search platform to add powerful search capabilities to your applications.
Windows Search indexing
Learn more about indexing technology in Windows Search, recognized file types, and how the index can be extended to support proprietary or specialty file types.
IFilter information
Find more information and resources for creating IFilters to support indexing of additional and proprietary file types for Windows Search.
Windows Vista Developer Center
Discover resources for building distributed applications on Windows Vista.
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