Partner Spotlight: Enterprise Search and Visual Composite Applications

At GEOINT 2007 in San Antonio, Texas, Microsoft Gold Partner IDV Solutions unveiled a first-of-its-kind integration of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, Enterprise Search, and Virtual Earth.  IDV’s Visual Fusion Suite of software integrates with MOSS, Enterprise Search, and Virtual Earth allowing users to visualize the results of keyword searches.  For example, as shown in the accompanying screenshots, a search for "port" in the visual composite application interface returns SharePoint feed results, geo-referenced through Visual Fusion, which can be viewed in the context of space...

and time...

Altogether, the visual composite application brings together dozens of information sets from the internet cloud (Virtual Earth imagery, GeoRSS, WMS, SHP files) and from within the enterprise (SQL Server, SharePoint, etc.) into an integrated, interactive user interface.

To accomplish the enterprise search integration, Visual Fusion is passing scope and keyword parameters to a select statement which queries a pre-established index.  The index was previously created by crawling the SharePoint default data source.  The keyword is the search term entered by the user in the Search web part, and the result of the search is a data table with defined properties.  Since the results are to be displayed in the context of a map, latitude and longitude are two of the properties expected in the data.

IDV Solutions empowers the enterprise with its compelling and enabling visual composite application software.  Coupled with the SharePoint collaboration platform, Visual Fusion facilitates straight forward site creation, management, and usage, leading to faster, enlightened decision making within any organization.