Search in Windows Vista

Search was significantly improved in Windows Vista to make it more powerful and easier to use. The following new features and enhancements in search and indexing functionality were added in Windows Vista:

• Windows Vista introduced a completely new search engine architecture called the Windows Search service, which was based on the earlier Windows Desktop Search (WDS) add-on for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The Windows Search service supersedes the earlier Indexing Service and provides better performance and improved query capabilities. For information about this new search engine architecture and how it works, see the section titled "How Windows Search Works" later in this tutorial. For information concerning the different versions of Windows Search, see the section titled "Understanding the Windows Search Versions" later in this tutorial.
• In Windows XP, indexing of content had to be enabled before it could be used. Beginning with Windows Vista, indexing of content is enabled by default and supports querying both the metadata (properties) of any file type and the full text of many common document formats. The extensibility of Windows Search also allows Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to provide plug-ins that allows users to search third-party document formats, such as Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Beginning with Windows Vista, users can also search for e-mail messages in Office Outlook 2007 and for content stored in Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 notebooks. Users can also use Advanced Query Syntax (AQS) to create complex queries that return highly focused results and then save these queries for future use.
• In Windows XP, the Indexing service did not try to avoid indexing content when the system was under heavy use. Beginning with Windows Vista, however, the Windows Search service includes algorithms that prevent the indexing of content when the system is too busy. This improvement makes Windows Search less intrusive than the previous Indexing service. A new feature of Windows Search is word-wheeled search (or search-as-you-type) functionality, whereby users can watch the results of their queries narrow as they type the characters of the file name or word they are looking for. This makes the search experience for the user much more responsive than in earlier platforms, where users had to type their entire search string and click Search each time they wanted to run a query.
• Beginning with Windows Vista, search capability is integrated into the shell in more places, making searching easy to perform because of the ubiquitous presence of the Search box within the Start menu, Control Panel, any Windows Explorer window, and other Windows Vista experiences. In addition, each instance of the Search box is tuned to provide results appropriate for the types of queries that users might perform from within that instance.
• Windows Vista introduced new searching and organizing capabilities that make it much easier for users to find files on their computers without having to spend a lot of time organizing them into hierarchical sets of folders. These capabilities include enhanced column headers; the ability to sort, group, and stack files and folders; and the ability to tag files and folders with descriptive keywords.
• Beginning with Windows Vista, client-side caching (CSC) is enabled by default so that redirected folders are accessible to users when their computers are not connected to the network. These redirected folders are indexed locally so that users can search their contents even when their computers are not on the network or when the server to which their user profile folders have been redirected is down. The cached versions of offline folders are also indexed locally so that network shares marked offline can even be searched when the user's computer is not connected to the network.
• Beginning with Windows Vista, users can search for information stored in shared folders on other computers running Windows Vista and later versions. The results of such searches are security trimmed so that search results display only those files and documents that the user has permission to access.