Windows Search Developer's Guide

Third parties can create applications that query the index for data programmatically and can extend Windows Search to index data from custom file formats and data stores. To create Windows Search applications, third-party developers must first implement a Shell data store to a achieve a reasonable user experience. For more information, see Implementing the Basic Folder Object Interfaces.

You must also download the Windows SDK for the Windows Search libraries. The Windows Search Code Samples contains useful code samples and an interoperability assembly for developing with managed code.

This section is organized as follows:

Additional Resources

Windows Search Overview

Windows Search Reference

Windows Search Code Samples

Federated Search in Windows

Related Search Technologies

Windows Search Glossary