The documentation search service allows you to search online HTML documents. It provides a search form that appears in your web browser. When users type words into the search form, it searches for the words, and then presents a search results page that contains links that lead to the documents that contain the target words.
The documentation search service is an optionally installable component of AIX. However, it is highly recommended that it be installed and configured since it is the search service for the AIX documentation libraries and the Web-based System Manager. It is also expected that other applications will use it as the search function for their online documentation.
The documentation search service does not allow you to search the internet or all documents on your computer. It only allows you to search the documents on your documentation server that have been indexed. Indexing creates a specially compressed copy of a document or collection of documents. It is this index that is searched rather than the original documents. This technique provides significant performance benefits. When a phrase the user is searching for is found in the index, the documentation search service presents a results page to the user that contains links that point to the original document that contains the phrase.
You can create your own indexes so that you can use Documentation Search Service to search HTML documentation that you have written. For more details, see the chapter Documentation Search Service in the AIX Version 4.3 General Programming Concepts: Writing and Debugging Programs book for more information.
Note: The documentation search service requires a web server to retrieve documents that are found during a search. It can use the Lotus Domino Go Webserver. The Domino Go Webserver comes with its own search engine. You can run and use both search services on the same machine. However, the AIX documentation search service indexes and the Lotus Domino Go indexes are not compatible. You must use the documentation search service index build tool to create indexes that will be searched using the AIX Documentation Search Service.
The documentation search service can be run on a local standalone computer, or it can be accessed from a remote computer. In both cases, all the following software must be installed on the same computer: Documentation Search Service, the documents to be searched, their indexes, and web server software. Note that the documents and their indexes must reside on the same computer as the documentation search service. For details on installation and configuration, see the following sections.
Currently, the AIX 4.3 Documentation Search Service can only search documents that meet two criteria. The documents must be written:
Keep in mind that even if a document is written in one of the supported languages, it cannot be indexed and searched unless it is also written in the ISO 8859-1 Code Set. For information on any changes in language support, make sure to read the README files that come with any updates to the AIX Documentation Search Service.