Understand FAST for SharePoint 2010

FAST for SharePoint is a separate server product available from Microsoft that can be configured to replace the standard search functionality shipped with SharePoint 2010. FAST for SharePoint offers a wide range of features that extend search capabilities beyond those that come with SharePoint 2010 itself. Among the features that FAST for SharePoint offers are:

Extreme Scale-Out Perhaps the most obvious advantage of FAST is its ability to index more than 100 million items and as much as 1 billion items with the appropriate server architecture.

Thumbnails and Previews FAST will generate thumbnail views of all Word and PowerPoint documents that can be seen directly from the search results page and without opening the files. In addition, users can directly browse the slides in a PowerPoint presentation without opening it.

Visual Best Bets With a Visual Best Bet, a graphic image depicting information about a keyword can be displayed on the search results page to assist users in finding the right result.

Similarity Search The search results can include a Similar Results link which, when clicked, will reexecute the search with a refined filter to retrieve items that are understood to be similar.

User Context from User Profile User contexts are targeted settings for search results that can be linked to users based on information in their user profile and that can be associated with Best Bets, document promotions, and other content prioritizations.

Tunable Relevance Ranking FAST allows the ability to identify specific documents within a site for promotion and to associate these promotions with user contexts.

Custom Property Extractors FAST can make use of add-ins built by developers to identify specific properties in documents to be used in the ranking and sorting of search results.

Inclusion of External Data in Relevance When external data is indexed via the Business Connectivity Services, this data can be used in relevancy rankings of content.