[Samba] Status of Windows Search Protocol support in Samba?

[Noel Power]

(resending, apologies if you got it already but I got a rejection message)

Hi All


On 21/04/2020 01:48, Jeremy Allison via samba wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 10:49:55AM +0100, Mark Rousell via samba wrote:
>> On 19/04/2020 10:25, Ralph Boehme via samba wrote:
>>> Am 4/17/20 um 5:55 PM schrieb Mark Rousell via samba:
>>>> I've been trying to Google this but have not found any definitive
>>>> answers. Does Samba currently support Windows Search Protocol[1]?
>>> short answer: no.
>>>
>>> Last time I talked to Noel this is still a multi-weeks effort (iirc)
>>> getting it finished, polished and integrated into master.
>>>
>>> -slow
>> Ralph,
>>
>> Thank you very much. I appreciate the response.
>>
>> Yes, I can imagine that integrating this is a non-trivial effort.
>>
>> Oddly enough, perhaps, I'd have thought that one of the hardest parts
>> would be interfacing with a host's index/search tool and figuring out
>> how to degrade sensibly if there is no compatible tool.
>>
>> On Linux operating systems (and perhaps BSD too, not sure), Tracker,
>> Baloo, Nepomuk (on old installations), Beagle (on yet older
>> installations), or Recoll might need to be interface targets. Presumably
>> Spotlight on Mac allows querying by API but I know nothing of it. And
>> Windows Search on Windows does allow querying by multiple APIs but, in
>> practice, would be the lowest priority to act as a server where WSP over
>> Samba is concerned.
>>
>> I feel I should be contributing to getting this done but my C skills are
>> extremely limited.
> Yes, I think Noel has it working, but he needs some help
> getting it reviewerd and integrated.
>
> Noel, does that accurately describe the state of affairs ?
>
yep, WSP server that translates protocol to tracker sparql queries is
working (with caveats [1])

The code would need some effort to get it in shape, as you might imagine
there has been quite a bit of bitrot especially of late as recent dce
rework broke it (although I have a WIP version working against current
master (even more hacky than usual)

I've also started to look at elastic search as a backend, and am going
to talk about that a little at sambaxp. Probably that talk would maybe
explain more (and in more detail) about some of these questions. I
intend to talk about state of the WSP work, revisit again and explain
how it works, what works, what doesn't,  what is provided, talk a bit
about experience of experimenting with elasticsearch how that affect
what needs to be done with the current implementation etc. (or something
like that :-))


Noel

[1]

WSP is complex, generic and very windows centric, there is a large
impedance  mismatch between the features that WSP seems to be able to
provide and query for and what say is available from tracker. (mileage
may vary with other indexers). The WSP support that I have worked on has
concentrated mainly on supporting the subset of queries that are emitted
when using the search UI ribbon in windows explorer. Additionally there
is a simple WSP samba search client that allows simple queries to
constructed to be targeted at any WSP server.