Comments on: SAP TechEd 2006: Enterprise Search

By: prasad

prasad — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 03:40:19 +0000

dear sir,
i beg to state that i dont know about sap ,but i have intrest to learn sap please send me about sap somthing

By: Cote'

Cote' — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 23:30:38 +0000

I’m glad you liked it, Scott. I’ll look forward to seeing your thoughts once you figure out where to start ;)

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 19:25:13 +0000

Unbelievably great post man, I don’t even know where to begin…

By: Cote'

Cote' — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:54:05 +0000

Ah, the well-seasoned smoke and the blood. This is why I try to carry plenty of matches and bandges ;)
Joking aside, yeah, access control is key. What was shocking to me in my admining and use of enterprise search was how little existed in my company. The payroll Excel example wasn’t just pulled from my head: as they say in the movies, “based on true events.”
In fact, what I really should have been focusing on was not being snarky about access control, but being snarky about how difficult it is to get employees to produce sufficient content to make enterprise search work. You can’t really search something as unstructured as a hallway conversation, a meeting with no notes, or the long stares of people when you ask them “is Project X going get done?”
Again, I’m taking my usual platitude approach (utopia, right?). The muck is more finding as many data sources as possible behing the firewall and wiring them up in search to make an (info) worker’s life easier.
For example, I’d be shocked if people archive and index group email lists as often as I’d think they should. I know almost every “mature” place I’ve worked was completly dumb to the notion, which is shocking in the software world. And yes, regulations and email destruction requirements throw even more muck on my utopic visions ;>

By: Dennis Howlett

Dennis Howlett — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 03:04:45 +0000

Regardless of how you cut it, BigCo management isn’t just going to let all workers have access to anything and everything. It wouldn’t make sense commercially. I can just see it: ‘We need to share the CAD diags for our new super-duper SUV - tell you what let’s keep it simple. Any asshole can see ‘em.’ It’s a Dlbert cartoon in the making.

Someone somewhere has to make decisions about access control. Now if that’s command and control - OK. But I’d rather have some measures in place than no measures. Otherwise, and given the litigious state of US/UK economies, I can see a lot of blood on the the corporate floor. Any volunteers?

Give me a solution to that issue and we’re in business. Otherwise, you’re blowing someone’s well-seasoned smoke.