Search service configuration parameters

Learn about the portal search service parameters and possible values.

To configure a portal search service, use the following parameters. For details about how to set the values for these parameters refer to Managing search services or the Manage Search administration portlet help.
Notes for configuring a search service:
  1. The values that you set for parameters of a portal search service apply to that search service and all its collections. They do not affect other search services of the portal or their search collections.
  2. If you modify a search service parameter that affects search collections, this modification will apply only to newly created search collections created in the search service. Existing search collections will not be affected by the updated parameter value.
  3. The search administration portlet Manage Search lists the Default Portal Search Service and its collection Portal Content or other collections in the default portal language and not in the language that the user has selected as preferred language for the portal or set in the browser. For example, if the portal default language is set to English and the user has selected German as the preferred portal language or has set the browser language to German, the Default Portal Search Service and its collections show in English.
  4. SOAP support for remote search services has been deprecated with WebSphere® Portal Version 8.0.
  5. If you delete a search service, the portal does not delete the search collections that are related to this search service. Delete the search collections by using the Manage Search administration portlet. If you delete the default search service, it is re-created new when you restart the portal.
Notes related to the search service configuration parameter list:
  1. The parameter list in both the search services panel of the Manage Search portlet and in the following information shows several parameters that end with the suffix _EXAMPLE. These are not used by the portal. They serve as an example for the same parameter without the suffix _EXAMPLE. They give an example value that you might use. Deleting these parameters or modifying their value has no effect.
  2. If you want to set a parameter that is listed here, but not in the portlet, just add it. To do this, type the parameter and the value in the entry fields Parameter key: and New parameter value: and click the Add Parameter button.
  3. In the following list the abbreviation pse in parameters or values stands for Portal Search Engine.
  4. The following list is arranged in alphabetical order. Parameters might be listed in a different order in the portlet.
CLEAN_UP_TIME_OF_DAY_HOURS
Time of day at which the portal performs the maintenance process for search collections to remove outdated files and broken links. Possible values are positive integers from 0 to 24 for the full hours of the day. The default value is 0 , which runs the cleanup at midnight.
Note: If you modify the value for this parameter, the new value is applied only to newly created collections of the search service. You cannot update this parameter for existing search collections.
DefaultCollectionsDirectory
You can use this parameter to specify the default directory for search collections. If you use Portal Search locally, this parameter is optional. If you specify no value for this parameter, the default collection directory is wp_profile_root/PortalServer/collections. If you set up a remote search service, this parameter is mandatory. For details about setting this parameter refer to Configuring the default location for search collections.
CONFIG_FOLDER_PATH
Use this parameter to determine where the configuration data for search collections is stored. The default is wp_profile_root/CollectionsConfig.
EJB
If you set up a remote search service by using EJB, use this parameter to specify the EJB name in JNDI. An example value is ejb/com/ibm/hrl/portlets/WsPse/WebScannerLiteEJBHome .

If you set this parameter, you also need to set the IIOP_URL parameter.

EJB_Example
This is an example that gives an example value for the parameter EJB . The example value is ejb/com/ibm/hrl/portlets/WsPse/WebScannerLiteEJBHome .
HTTP_MAX_BODY_SIZE_MB
Use this parameter to limit how much content is fetched during a crawl from application files, such as PDF, Microsoft Word etc. The specified unit is MB. The default value is 20 MB. If a file exceeds the specified limit, the document is truncated, and Portal Search indexes the fetched portion as is possible. However, indexing might fail on truncated documents; in this case the document will not be listed under search results at all.
Notes:
  1. If you modify the value for this parameter, the new value is applied only to newly created collections of the search service. You cannot update this parameter for existing search collections.
  2. Document Conversion Services might not be able to convert the content of truncated application files. If Document Conversion Services fails to convert a truncated application file, it logs an error to the SystemErr.log file. If tracing is enabled for the portal, Portal Search logs a warning message to the portal log file.
HTTP_MAX_SEEDLIST_SIZE_MB
This parameter limits how much portal content is fetched during a crawl from your own portal site. It determines the amount of space that is reserved for listing portal site resources or managed Web content resources. The specified unit is MB. The default value is 4 MB. If a crawl exceeds the limit set for this parameter, the crawl fails, and Portal Search logs an error message. In this case, or if returned search results do not represent to complete extent of your portal site resources, increase this value.
Note: If you modify the value for this parameter, the new value is applied only to newly created collections of the search service. You cannot update this parameter for existing search collections.
HTTP_NON_APPL_MAX_BODY_SIZE_MB
Use this parameter to limit how much content of each HTML page is fetched from Web sites of collections that belong to this search service. The specified unit is MB. The default value is 0.2 MB. This means that the amount of content sent for indexing is always the first 0.2 MB of text.
Note: If you modify the value for this parameter, the new value is applied only to newly created collections of the search service. You cannot update this parameter for existing search collections.
IIOP_URL
If you set up a remote search service by using EJB, use this parameter to specify the IIOP URL. An example value is iiop://localhost:2811 .
IIOP_URL_Example
This is an example that gives an example value for the parameter IIOP_URL . The example value is iiop://localhost:2811 .
PSE_TYPE
Use this parameter to specify the type of search service. Possible values are localhost , ejb , and soap. The default value is localhost for local search service.

If you use Portal Search locally, this parameter is optional.

If you set up a remote search, this parameter is mandatory. In this case specify the type of remote service that you use, EJB or SOAP. If you specify ejb here, you also need to specify the values for the parameters EJB and IIOP_URL . If you specify soap here, you also need to specify the values for the parameter SOAP_URL .

SEARCH_SECURITY_MODE
This parameter defines access control enforcement during search. Three filter modes are supported. Specify one of the following values, depending on the filter mode that you want to use:
SECURITY_MODE_PREFILTER
Specify this value to use pre-filtering mode. Pre-filtering provides the fastest filtering, as it is performed in the search index level. An additional advantage of this filtering mode is that remote secured content sources can be searched from portal. However, as it is based on search index only, the search result list can be temporarily inconsistent with user access rights if these access rights were changed after the last crawl:
  • If users who had their access rights restricted after the last crawl, they might get search results listed to which they had access before, but to which they no longer have access. When these users click such a link in the search result list, they cannot access the document.
  • If a user was given access rights on documents after the last crawl, the user will not get these documents listed among the search results until after the next crawl.
Note: If the search service contains Portal content (a collection that contains a content source of type Portal site), then this security mode is invalid and must not be used.
SECURITY_MODE_POSTFILTER
Post-filtering
Specify this value to use post-filtering mode. Post-filtering provides the safest but costly filtering approach. It checks access permission in real time for each returned search result against Portal Access Control. As a result you can use it only for local content sources. This was the only filtering mode available before portal V 7.0.
SECURITY_MODE_PRE_POST_FILTER
Pre-post-filtering
Specify this value to use pre-post-filtering mode. This is the default. Pre-post-filtering combines the two filter modes previously mentioned. It provides a balanced method for enforce access control. It filters most irrelevant documents at the pre-filtering phase based on the search index. This results in fewer rejections in the post-filtering phase. As it still uses post-filtering, you can apply it only for local content sources. As it uses pre-filtering, search result lists might be temporarily inconsistent with users' access rights until after the next crawl.
SEEDLIST_PAGE_TIMEOUT
Use this parameter to increase the timeout for fetching the seedlist page. The specified unit for the value is seconds. The default value is 150 sec. This means that the portal search attempts to fetch the seedlist main URL for 150 seconds.
Note: If you modify the value for this parameter, the new value is applied only to newly created collections of the search service. You cannot update this parameter for existing search collections.
SOAP_URL
If you set up a remote search service by using SOAP, use this parameter to specify the SOAP URL. An example value is http://localhost:10000/WebScannerSOAP/servlet/rpcrouter .
SOAP_URL_Example
This is an example that gives an example value for the parameter SOAP_URL . The example value is http://localhost:10000/WebScannerSOAP/servlet/rpcrouter .

The following parameters are reserved for internal use only. Do not change their values.

CONTENT_SOURCE_TYPE_FEATURE_NAME
This parameter is reserved for internal use only. Do not change its value. The default value is ContentSourceType .
CONTENT_SOURCE_TYPE_FEATURE_VAL_PORTAL
This parameter is reserved for internal use only. Do not change its value. The default value is Portal .
CONTENT_SOURCE_TYPE_FEATURE_VAL_WEB
This parameter is reserved for internal use only. Do not change its value. The default value is Web .
SecurityResolverId
This parameter is reserved for internal use only. Do not change its value. The default value is com.ibm.lotus.search.plugins.provider.core.PortalSecurityResolverFactory.
SetProperties
This parameter is reserved for internal use only. Do not change its value. Possible values are on or off . The default value is on .
startup
This parameter is reserved for internal use only. Do not change its value. The default value is false .
VALIDATE_COOKIE
This parameter is reserved for internal use only. Do not change its value. The default value is 123 .
WORK_MANAGER
You can use this parameter to specify the work manager. This parameter is reserved for internal use only. Do not change its value. The default value is wps/searchIndexWM .
WORK_MANAGER_DEPLOY
This is an example of the deployed WORK_MANAGER parameter. The example value is wps/searchIndexWM .
WORK_MANAGER_NATIVE
This is an example of the parameter WORK_MANAGER for native threads for debug purposes only. The example value is force.hrl.work.manager.use.native.threads .
WORK_MANAGER_NAME
This parameter specifies the JNDI name of the work manager that Portal Search uses.