A previous article on ASPAlliance.com enthuses about Index Server. I’d agree with the author - Index Server makes it very straightforward to create search solutions that would cost many thousands of dollars to implement using alternative technologies.

This article describes what is required to use Index Server from within ASP. It assumes you have access to a web server running Internet Information Server 4.0 on Windows NT Server. The article is particularly suitable if, like me, you have Windows NT hosting with a company such as Alentus, who can supply Index Server support for a modest annual charge.

Note that Windows 2000 Server also has an equivalent to Index Server called Indexing Services, but there’s no guarantee that these code samples will work on Windows 2000. Incidentally, the code samples described in this article are available from a link at the end of the article.