Search Technology
Purpose
With data volumes rising fast, pinpointing critical information can pose major challenges – particularly if the details you need reside in business applications. Search is a fast and easy way to find information and data within your business environment.
The following SAP NetWeaver search technologies provide a framework for enterprise-wide search solutions for structured data (business objects) and unstructured data (documents):
● SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search
SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search is a productized search solution (can be found on SAPīs price list and licensed independently) providing unified, comprehensive and secure real-time access to structured as well as unstructured enterprise data and information. Search access to external information can be included by integrating external search services.
● Search Services in SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP
The search services in the SAP NetWeaver Application Server (AS) ABAP provide a framework for searching business objects in SAP applications. They comprise the following components:
Embedded Search serves SAP Business Suite applications as a basic search technology platform for searching business objects, using the TREX engine (starting with SAP Business Suite 2008). Embedded Search is the Enterprise Search component in the AS ABAP. It may be referred to as Enterprise Search (ABAP) in the documentation of SAP Business Suite applications.
Search Engine Service serves SAP applications to use the TREX search engine to search for business objects (starting with SAP ERP 6.0).
● Search and Classification Engine (TREX)
The SAP NetWeaver standalone engine Search and Classification TREX provides SAP applications with services for searching, classification, and text-mining in large collections of documents (unstructured data) as well as for searching in and aggregating across business objects (structured data). TREX provides indexing and search technology to search solutions such as SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search and to services such as Search Engine Service. TREX as a SAP NetWeaver stand-alone engine is a crucial building block of most search functionality in SAP solutions. However, TREX cannot be licensed as an independent product.
● Enterprise Knowledge Management
Enterprise Knowledge Management provides a document repository framework that allows users to search across documents (unstructured data) using the search engine technology of Search and Classification (TREX).
The following figure depicts the SAP NetWeaver search technologies and their mutual dependencies:
See also
SAP search technology on SAP Community Network (SDN) www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/nw-search