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Technical details about Find communication
I have one more assumption I need verification of:
- If only standard EPiServer / EPiServer Find setup is used, only data which is in the database will be communicated from the web solution to Find
Nov 06, 2014 9:25
Hi Christian,
I will answer your questions below yours where I pasted them in.
- The EPiServer solution (web) makes just two types of calls to Find: Index (or remove/update index for) content and search.
Yes and No. For the actual search service that is true. The UI is loaded from http://dl.episerver.net which is behind a CDN. Sam address used for tracking script if tracking is enabled
- Find never contacts the web solution, all communication is initiated from the web site
Correct
- The communication goes over standard SOAP (I know REST is available, but we want to just use the SOAP variant in this case)
Sorry there is only REST available
- Destination URL for Find will not change - the IP address might theoretically change (if it is guarranteed to keep a fixed value, that would be a plus)
URL will not change. We can not gurantee that the IP will not
- Communication usees port 80 or 443 only
Correct
- If only standard EPiServer / EPiServer Find setup is used, only data which is in the database will be communicated from the web solution to Find
If tracking is used then it will also sent information about what people searched on and what they clicked on in the search result
Hope I was able to shed some light in to your questions.
/Marcus
Nov 06, 2014 11:43
Thank you for your reply. Most of them I can live with :) Just a couple of follow-ups:
Tracking: Am I correct in assuming that this is a js-file which is included from dl.episerver.net? Does this do any direct communication with EPiServer Find (from the browser), or does it just send data to the web server which in turn sends it to EPiServer Find? Opening the firewall from every client is probably not an option...
UI: Are you talking about the administration UI for Find? This is probably just content provided by a web server embedded in the EPiServer admin UI, right? If so, that *might* be a problem, but with a potential solution:
The solution actually runs on two servers - one inside the private network and one on the open Internet. Both use the same database, on the private network, available to the online server through a tunnel. Would it be possible to just have the Find admin UI available from the online server and not on the one inside the private network? And still use Find to do indexing and searches from within the private network?
Nov 06, 2014 13:07
Hi again.
Tracking, It just sends data to the web server which in turn sends it to EPiServer Find.
UI: Yes I am talking about the administrative UI for FIND. Correct about the fact that it is content being delivered from https://dl.episerver.net.
There is a possibility that could be done yes. Will require some "hacks" removing dll's from one server and so on but should be doable.
You might not be aware but we will soon start to provide Find as a Virtual Appliance server as well. Where you can host this in your own network infrastructure. We are currently running this in a beta program and will soon move into production for this. Then everything will be served thorugh the internal server/cluseter.
/Marcus
Nov 08, 2014 10:38
For a customer who needs to access EPiServer Find from a highly restricted network I need to know for sure some details how the communication between an EPiServer solution and EPiServer Find (online) works.
I have made the following assumptions, and I was hoping someone could either confirm them or tell me where I've got it wrong:
- The EPiServer solution (web) makes just two types of calls to Find: Index (or remove/update index for) content and search.
- Find never contacts the web solution, all communication is initiated from the web site
- The communication goes over standard SOAP (I know REST is available, but we want to just use the SOAP variant in this case)
- Destination URL for Find will not change - the IP address might theoretically change (if it is guarranteed to keep a fixed value, that would be a plus)
- Communication usees port 80 or 443 only
Are these fair assumptions? Is there anything else I need to keep in mind when I specify what needs to be done to access EPiServer Find for a EPiServer soltuion running inside a private network?