Custom search page with results from Sharepoint Crawled content and Custom SQL DB

I think storing huge content in custom database and relative documents in sharepoint library is common practice.

But customer wants single search in custom page should combine results of relevant documents from document library and relevant custom database content. (OOB SP search results should be leveraged as this should search content inside document as well)

Can we acheive this by combining results of custom search query against crawl database and sql results form custom DB?

OR

do we need to crawl custom database inside sharepoing with help of external content type. Please advice

  • Edited by kamal_sp Tuesday, March 11, 2014 10:04 PM
March 12th, 2014 1:04am

If you want the search results combined into a single response then you'll need to crawl the Custom DB through SharePoint search. Depending on what the custom content is you can either crawl it using a BCS connection or you may need your own custom search extension.

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March 12th, 2014 1:35am

Thanks Alex. In our case, data in customdb is spread across multiple tables in relational manner.  Can you pl advice whther below approach would work.

1. Use Keyword Query Language in C# against sharepoint site and get results

2. Use Store Proc or SQL against customDB to get results

Combine both and show it in Custom page placeholder.

March 14th, 2014 5:11pm

so instead of connecting SharePoint to the databases/tables, and letting SP index itself, you're going to write the indexing/search yourself and figure out the connection part? When in fact, the SP search is going to do a much better job at searching that TSQL (%LIKE% or FULLTEXT)?

Alex was right... connect BCS to the database, and let SP do the indexing.

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March 14th, 2014 7:57pm

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