Enterprise Search combining SAP and Microsoft realtime crawling results

Thinking about Enterprise search SAP will release an Open Search interface in their upcoming Search Framework code named "Argo". A preview on Argo for evaluation is available for download on sdn today:
This brings up the question if a search between SAP on structured as well as Repository based unstructured data in combination with Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server's Search would be possible. With the help of our partner SPELL GmbH (based in Karlsruhe, Germany) we have done a PoC facading SAP's NetWeaver Search Engine TREX with a simple WebService to access the KM repository and aggregate search results in Office Sharepoint Server. The resulting Whitepaper describes how to implement this scenario using the Sharepoint Server Search WebPart or the new Business Data Catalogue (defining an entity on the returned URLs and parts of the document properties like creation date, author and size). The example shows that in general a search in unstructured data in SAP NetWeaver KM is possible (searching BAPIs and RFCs is even easier sinse they can be consumed directly as Web Services in the BDC). If you have read about the WSS connector for WebDav  then you see the opposite direction of Search in this paper.

Nevertheless SAP and Microsoft are committed to improve their interoperability in the Future using Web Services. When SAP will release the next major version of NetWeaver, the usage of Web Services between KM/Portal and Office Sharepoint Server might become more real since both products then provide WebServices (as Sharepoint does today - see also here).

We are also on the way to update our Interoperability overview between SAP NetWeaver Portal and Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server to reflect additions like Search, the BDC, Office Servers, new WebServices etc.

-Tilo Boettcher