Platform:
Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista Price: $1,299 (as of 2007, up to 100 indexes, 50 million documents) 30-day free test download
Features
Indexing
Will index local disks and file shares, including UNC
Robot crawler for web sites or intranet portals
Can request via proxy server
Structured data indexing XML by example (additional module required)
Includes near-real-time indexing of items added to watched directory
Database indexing
ODBC connector - MS SQL Server, Oracle and MySQL
DB account and password security
Database external file index/search
Oracle BLOB/CLOB data index/search
SQL "where" condition filtering
Incremental index update option
Index update scheduling tools
Can limit link distance and subdirectory depth to avoid black holes
Can filter file paths with wildcards and regular expressions
Access control by binding to Active Directory / LDAP / ACL
Supports basic authentication (user name /password) and cookies
Index-based access control for users and groups
File format compatibility: text, HTML, PDF, Open Document (.odt, ods, .odp, .odg, .odf), Microsoft Office (.doc, .dot, .ppt, .pps, .pot, .xls, .xla, .xlw, .vst, .vss, .vsd)
Also indexes names and metadata in many image, sound, and video file formats
Includes limited command-line API for adding new formats
Standard version can handle 50 million documents or records
Run-time and summary index reporting
Query Parsing
Default "match all" query
Recognizes Internet Query operators: +. -, "quotes" for phrase matching
Supports Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT or &, |, ! and parentheses for controlling the parse order
Advanced search query in fields, filter by dates
Database queries by field, by date range, and by numerical limits
Editable lists for stopwords, synonyms, autocomplete and related terms (in all character sets, including both versions of Chinese.)
Retrieval
Multilingual simultaneous search in English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, as well as character sets fir Western, Southern and Central Europe, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Greek, Turkish, and Baltic,
Relevance Ranking
Uses match term locations, frequencies and proximity
Search UI
Default uncluttered clean layout
Search labels and prompts in English, Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese
Limited facets: Date, File Type, Author, Government classification
Sort by option: Score(Default), Date, Size. Title, Filename, Author
"Hot query" -- search field autocomplete menu
Related terms display
Admin options to set logo, font type and color
Runs as a CGI on its own web server, Apache, or IIS
Reports and Metrics
Daily/ Weekly/ Monthly query reports generation
"Hot Keywords" - frequent queries
No-match word reports
Administration interface
in English, Traditional or Simplified Chinese
Web module for configuring site search, viewing metrics
Doc module for managing structured and unstructured data
Admin status options: Admin, User, Guest
Excellent documentation, very complete, with screenshots
Articles & Reviews
The Benefits of Deploying Powerful Search CapabilitiesOsterman Research White Paper:
June, 2007 Describes the importance and difficulty of implementing Enterprise Search, suggests key features are scalability, powerful indexing, both simple and more complex (granular) search options, speed and flexibility.
Examples
Water.gov.twTaiwanese government water-management site, mostly in Chinese, search for tap-water