Enth, a US developer of a database search engine, has announced the availability of the a Federated Search Connector for Microsoft SharePoint.

The Connector integrates results from the Enth database search engine with search results generated by SharePoint to reduce the time, effort and cost of developing and running business reports.

Traditional search engines are able to crawl, index and quickly find unstructured content found on web pages, within documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDF files and even within emails. However, many organisations have significantly more information stored in relational databases that cannot be accessed by traditional search engines.

Enth unlocks this content by enabling relational databases to be searched using plain text. Enth dynamically generates optimised SQL to quickly retrieve data from one or more databases in response to a search request. Enth can find information up to 90% faster than using business reporting software and can reduce report development expenses by as much as 80%.

“While business reporting software has made progress in usability, the reality is that it’s still too complex for many users,” said John Grace, CEO of Enth.

“Users are required to learn a unique software application, often must sort through long lists of reports to find the right one, and if they can’t find an existing report, users need to know which database has the required information they are looking for and then write a new, custom report. With Enth, users just type in their request and press search!

“No need to start a software application, find a report or write something custom. Enth makes finding information as fast and easy as using a traditional search tool.”

Users registered at Enth.com can also specify public feeds that they would like have to included in their SharePoint search results. For example, a marketing manager may want to see public demographic and unemployment data for a region when looking at private regional sales data. Or, a police administrator may need historical crime trend data while planning future resource needs. Or, a political campaign manager may want to see zip codes in which fund raising is less than a competitor.