The conversion and storage of existing documents cannot be complete without the ability to retrieve the documents with both speed and accuracy. Dependent upon your particular requirement, SNTK Document Conversions can assist you in analyzing and implementing a document retrieval system most appropriate to your needs.

Indexable Data Types
Most search engines will support plain text and HTML files, but if you publish documents in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), care must be taken that your search engine can index these file types. A valued capability in a search engine is the capability to not only find the relevant document, but highlight the occurrences of the search term in the document.

Search Method Flexibility
Not only do you want to specify a keyword or phrase, but also the ability to make a more sophisticated search with Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) proximity statements that find words near each other, synonyms, and other file characteristics, such as the document author.

Platform Support
Some search engines only work with one or two web servers. This presents potential problems if your organization has multiple intranets using different servers (Windows NT, UNIX, etc.).

Automatic Indexing
The ideal search engine has the ability to automatically index all flies at a specified time. To do this, the search engine must go through each files and index every work. This capability ensures that the database file used by the search application remains current.

Remote Administration
Having the ability to reindex and modify search engine configuration remotely can save significant time when compared to having to physically go to the server console.

Search Engine Choices
Below is a sampling of some popular search engines in terms of both capabilities and ease of use:

Excite for Web Servers
Excite runs with both Windows NT and UNIX systems. This application enables you to exclude files and directories easily, but does not handle many data types other than plain text and HTML.

Knowledge Network
From Fulcrum Technologies, this application can index documents in Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, Adobe PDF, and other formats.

Microsoft Index Server
This application runs with Windows NT Server 4.0 and later and Internet Information Server 2.0 and later. It is a reasonably complete solution if you currently use Windows NT Server.

Netscape Catalog Server
Netscape Catalog Server handles a large variety of file types (Office, PDF, and others). It offers both remote browser-based administration, and is compatible with several web servers.

Open Text
Geared to very large document databases, this search engine can create and maintain indexes larger than 2 gigabytes. A 64-bit search engine, this is an expensive but thorough solution for large organizations.

Verity
A proven leader in search technology, this application is used by a wide variety of large organizations.