Recently I was configuring search to access my SQL Server data via an external content type for a demo I was presenting. Once the content source was configured I ran the full crawl to populate the index with the data from my external source. After about a minute the crawl was marked complete. So naturally I am going to want to test it and make sure my data is pulling through. The external data is a basic asset database so I did a search for one of the manufacturers I knew was in there. Received the dreaded “Nothing here matches your search” message.
Well I know there is data in there so obviously something went wrong. I know what is wrong as I have done this before, but I want to go through some of the troubleshooting steps you can do to help determine the problem.