MOSS 2007 Search Scopes Lost after Restore

We were trying to restore a backup of one of our Site collections from PROD onto our TEST VM and restore was successful but we lost all of our SITE COLLECTION SEARCH SCOPES (not Shared scopes defined at SSP but search scopes defined at the SITE COLLECTION level). So we started asking ourselves where is the “Site Search Scopes” or so to call it LOCAL SEARCH SCOPES are stored, in the content database or in the some otherdatabase.

I understand the Shared scopes that are defined in SSP are part of the SSP database but don’t know about the SITE COLLECTION (or Local) Search Scopes. We just took a backup from PROD environment and then restored the content db on one of the dev m/c, everything looks good except that now we have no Local scopes or Site collection Scopes in the restored site collection.

 So it turns out that Site collection search scopes are stored in the Shared Service Database in the MSSScopes Table and hence the LOCAL scopes won't be carried over. In case if someone ever stumbles just wanted to let you know that this is not a bug and just something that is by design and perfectly legitimate.