samba - Apr 2020 - Status of Windows Search Protocol support in Samba?

I've been trying to Google this but have not found any definitive
answers. Does Samba currently support Windows Search Protocol[1]?

I did find these lecture slides from a few years ago (five years?) but
they don't tell me about the current status:
https://sambaxp.org/archive_data/SambaXP2015-SLIDES/wed/track1/sambaxp2015-wed-track1-Noel_Power-WindowSearchProtocolAndSamba.pdf
(by Noel Power of SUSE).

If you're wondering what I'm talking about, here is a brief explanation:
The Windows Search tool on a Windows Vista/7/8/10/2008/2012/2016/2019
computer normally indexes and searches local files. However, it can also
query the Windows Search index on a remote
Vista/7/8/10/2008/2012/2016/2019 computer. Note that this is not
indexing the remote files: It is actually querying the remote index on
the remote computer. This remote query is done over via the Windows
Search Protocol using SMB as the transport.

I'd like to know if Samba supports this type of query.

I should point out that it would require the remote/server computer to
be running some kind of indexing tool and for Samba on that computer to
have the ability to query the indexing tool's index, but that is all
certainly feasible.

Clearly this would be useful in many scenarios but especially with
querying an index on a NAS.

(  As an aside, what I describe above should not be confused with so
called 'Federated Search' which commonly uses the OpenSearch[2]
protocol. That said, OpenSearch can be used to expose the content index
on a server to remote queries in a standardised way but it's not the
same as WSP above.  )



Footnotes:-
1: Windows Search Protocol:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-wsp/

2: OpenSearch: http://opensearch.org, redirects to
https://github.com/dewitt/opensearch

-- 
Mark Rousell

On 17/04/2020 16:55, Mark Rousell via samba wrote:
> I've been trying to Google this but have not found any definitive
> answers. Does Samba currently support Windows Search Protocol[1]?
Has no one at all got any ideas about where look or ask about this?
Gotta be someone who uses this or would like to see it. ;-)


-- 
Mark Rousell

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 Boehme, Samba Team                https://samba.org/
Samba Developer, SerNet GmbH   https://sernet.de/en/samba/
GPG-Fingerprint   FAE2C6088A24252051C559E4AA1E9B7126399E46

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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.

-- 
Mark Rousell