Full Text Search using Azure Search

Shankar Subramanyam Senior Consultant | Enthusiast: Web/Cloud Technologies Financials Economics About me

Agenda Overview of Full text search using Azure Search Demo – Build Movies Catalog using Azure Search Q & A

What is full text search? In text retrieval, full text search refers to techniques for searching a single computer-stored document or a collection in a full text database. Full-text search is distinguished from searches based on metadata or on parts of the original texts represented in databases (such as titles, abstracts, selected sections, or bibliographical references).text retrievalcomputerdocumentfull text databasemetadata Reference -

Full text search platform Lucene Solr ElasticSearch Azure Search FSIS Database Full text search etc.

Key words in search Indexes Documents Fields Types of searchability Retrievable Non-retrievable Tokenization - Analyzer Facets Scoring

What is Azure Search ? Azure Search is a PaaS servicePaaS ElasticSearch as a managed service High performance Horizontally scalable Administration and querying Via REST API Via C#, using Azure Search Client Library (NuGet: AzureSearchClient) Secured using API keys Query keys (multiple) Management keys (two

Demo – Create Search Service in Azure portal

1.Login to Azure Portal 2.Click New 3.Select Data + Storage 4.Select Search as shown

1.Fill all the information 2.For Pricing Tire - Make sure to select Free 3.Click Create to create Azure Search Service

Service Name and API Key

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Inverted index aardvark hood red little riding robin women zoo Little Red Riding Hood Robin Hood Little Women {(2, 1)} 01 {(2, 0)}{(0, 0)} 0 Terms/ Words Documents

Azure Search is structured A search index has a predefined structure It is not dynamic Each document can have below operations Search Suggestion Lookup Count Each field in the index has characteristics defined when created Filterable? Searchable? Faceted? Retrievable? Sortable?

Field Characteristics: Key Required! Can only be on one field for the document Can be used to look up a document directly Update Delete

Field Characteristics: Searchable Makes the field full-text-search-able Allowed data types are string and collection Breaks the words of the field for indexing purposes “Big Red Jeep” will become separate components A search for “big”, “red”, “jeep”, or “big jeep” will hit this record Searchable fields cause bloat! Only make it searchable if it needs to be

Field Characteristics: Filterable Doesn’t under go word breaking Exact matches only Only searches for “big red jeep” will hit a “big red jeep” record

Field Characteristics: Sortable By default, results are sorted by score

Field Characteristics: Facetable Data the data type except Geography points are facetable Used to rank records by other notions Jeeps that sold by this {dealer} Jeeps that are this {color}

Field Characteristics: Suggestions Used for auto-complete Only for string or collection of string False by default Causes bloat in the index!

Field Characteristics: Retrievable Allows the field to be returned in the search results Key fields must be retrievable

Data Type / Properties Matrix

Demo : Movies Catalog Create Index

Query parameters Request - GET /indexes/[index name]/docs?[query parameters] Parameter – search =[string]$orderby=[string] searchMode=any|all facet=[string] searchFields=[string] api-version=[string] $skip=#scoringProfile=[string] $top=# highlight=[string] $count=true|false scoringParameter=[string] $select=[string] highlightPreTag=[string] $filter=[string] highlightPostTag=[string] Example : desc&api-version= &facet=Year

Demo : Movies Catalog Consume Index

Q & A

References Azure Search REST API in/documentation/articles/search-api preview/ in/documentation/articles/search-api preview/ Azure Search Client Library Getting Started 50b624b7 50b624b7 Inverted index