Zoom Search Engine SDK

Why a Software Development Kit (SDK)?

Users of Wrensoft's Zoom Search Engine have enjoyed our product over the years. However, we occasionally receive requests from more advanced developers who need to customize their Zoom Search Engine to suit their individual demands and specification beyond what is possible with the stock package.

This SDK is an optional addition to Zoom Search Engine, that will help advanced software developers to better integrate Zoom search into their web sites and applications.

What's in it

  • Zoom configuration file format specification document
  • Zoom XML output specification document
  • Search CGI C++ source code for:
    • Windows 32bit and 64-bit
    • Linux 32bit and 64-bit
    • BSD Unix 32bit and 64-bit
    • Sparc/Solaris 64bit
    • Mac OSX 64-bit

What's not in it

This package does not include the Zoom Search Engine itself. You need to already have the Zoom search engine software before you can use this SDK. This package only contains additional source code and technical documents for the Zoom engine. Only the source for search.cgi is included. The source code for the Zoom indexer is not being made available. The source code for search.php and search.asp are already available as part of the normal Zoom package.

Benefits of Zoom Search Engine SDK

  • Customize and recompile CGI search script as required.
  • Create & modify valid Zoom configuration file from external applications
  • Integrate Zoom into other applications using results in XML format.

Who needs the SDK?

Typical users would be advanced software developers who want to create highly customized search engines for large web sites. Or developers that need to support unusual software or hardware platforms (e.g. Mainframe computers, Alpha chips, Itanium servers, etc). We would expect 99% of our users NOT to need or want this package, because Zoom already provides a high level of customization without this SDK.

Delivery & Updates

After purchase a ZIP file with the source code will be made available for download within 1 business day after the purchase. Updates are made available upon request by E-mail, and are free for 12 months following a purchase.

License Agreement

After purchase, you can modify and recompile the search.cgi application for your own use. You can distribute the resulting binary file without restriction or royalties. You can NOT on sell the source code or documentation. You can NOT distribute the source code or documentation. You can NOT use the source code to create a competing product or as part of a competing product. You can also NOT distribute Zoom Search Engine Indexer software.

Rebuilding the code

The CGI is a combination of C and C++ source code which is written using only standard libraries to ensure cross-platform compatibility. In Windows, we build the files using Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Vista. Make files are supplied for Linux, BSD and Sun Sparc and on these platforms the g++ and gcc compilers are used. As of Feb 2007 we are using, FreeBSD 4.8-STABLE, Debian GNU/Linux kernel 2.2 and Sparc Solaris 10 6/06.

Future content

As time goes on we will probably add additional source code and documents to this package. Exact details are not available at the moment.