The Generic Search Server staging database consists of a set of database tables used for the following purposes:
- To store Search Service definitions - information about which Search Services are available together with their structure
- To store values extracted from the operational database which will be used to populate Indices corresponding to the Search Service Definitions.
The fundamental design rationales for using database tables as an intermediary are as follows:
- They offload the searches from the main database which means that searches do not impact on live system performance
- They persist appropriately for the search service - Data is persisted in a form that is suitable for the purposes of building the search indices. The Application data is transformed, scrubbed and consolidated before being stored in the staging database. Therefore, batch jobs will not have to be continually rerun to re-extract the data each time a Generic Search Server instance is started.