This was half-day “hands on” workshop that focused on SharePoint Server Search technologies along with architecture and design issues. Bob Mixon did an excellent job of showing the features available in the current release of SharePoint Search and the huge improvements made by using Ontolica. It will cost you less to deploy Ontolica just for the ability to launch PDFs from a drop menu than development cost of just this one feature.....

Ontolica installs as a set of features (OntolicaSearchBox, OntolicaSearchForMOSS, OntolicaSearchPlatformForMOSS, and OntolicaStyleGallery) that you can use in your site definitions and deploy as part of any solutions wsp to SharePoint.

However, more basic than the ability to add features to site definitions is that your end users who are responsible for the behavior of how results are returned for their section of the portal can use an elegant GUI not just to create drop downs on results with actions But to apply Quick Filters, use Sorting , Duplicate results collapsing, Dynamic Summaries, Did You Mean?, Advanced Search with Boolean Search, Search Result Actions built from lists metadata, site columns,  add pictures to best bets that create the thumbnail for the images on the fly.

I have included below links to the PowerPoint Presentation and User Guides, Ontolica Downloads, Bob Mixon, and a link to an Ontolica Site with username and password that you can use for the next month to modify as you wish… 

Workshop Presentations http://dimension-si.com/downloads/default.aspx

Ontolica Downloads http://www.ontolica.com/Download.aspx

Bob Mixon http://mixonconsulting.com/

Ontolica SandBox

http://litware.mondosoft.com/sites/wsd11101

username wsd11101

password P@ssw0rd

-Ivan