He watches MST3K

Microsoft posted a list of changes a while ago for new/removed features in SharePoint 2013 and FAST Search 2013 here. The bigger changes to FAST are in there. You should really pay attention to it. Why aren’t you reading it now? Want to see a list of things I care about? Of course you do. Read on.

• Enterprise Crawler is removed, the new one inside SP does not support JavaScript or Java. So dynamic crawler is out. WHY? I have no idea. This seems insane in this modern world. Migration Path: Don’t use javascript, java,python, ruby or any dynamic content on your page.
• JDBC Connector is out the door too. This is ok I think. I know a lot of people use this, because it is super simple. Point at DB, and crawl. This was a band aid that needed to be yanked off. Migration Path: USE BCS LIKE A BIG BOY.
• FQL Changes: These seem to be fine, but obviously might break things if you use it now. They also removed SQL queries. Migration Path: Don’t use SQL and Fix or improve your FQL.
• Shallow Refiners Gone: I am kind of happy with this, as most clients never wanted Shallow Refiners in the first place, more time was spent forcing Deep Refiners to kick off. Migration Path: Make sure your app doesn’t break when your refiners come back as Deep rather than Shallow.
• Lotus Notes Connector Gone: Hahahha GOOD RIDDANCE! j/k sort of. I feel the pain of a thousand devs who were forced to build FAST connections to crawl Lotus Notes due to legacy data in 30 year old applications. Migration Path: Use BCS Version for Lotus Notes or 3rd Party plugin.
• Query Web Service gone: Ouch, this one is going to hurt right in the feels. Your old friend, Query, is headed out to pasture. It’s ok, his new, cooler friends CSOM and REST Services are here to hang out with your enterprise app. Migration Path: Change your code to use the new REST web service or use the SDK to access it.

If you are getting this error: unexpected error occurred while communicating with administration service, while trying to setup some search index schema stuff (managed properties). Check your event log for the reason. SharePoint is REALLLY good at masking the true issue in my case it was this. Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Extended.Administration.Common.AdminException: Refiner ‘xxxxxxx’ has Managed Property reference ‘xxxxxxx’ that is not queryable.  Meaning I hadn’t checked the Queryable checkbox of the managed property before trying to click the refiner checkbox. Why there isn’t some validation? I don’t know. You shouldn’t be able to check a checkbox if there isn’t a prereq met, but whatever. Haters gonna hate.