Using Aspose.Words for Indexing

Hi

We are looking for a server side component to index Word documents authored by users on client machines and stored on a server file share. We currently have this working using Word automation on the server but it is not an ideal option as we know...

Our biggest problem relates to dealing with concurrent editing, saving etc by the user and our server side component needing to open the same document to read it and then store a text based copy on our database for indexing. Fo one thing (we at least!) have difficulty in detecting that the user has closed the document client side so we are free to open it server side (assuming of course he does not attempt to open it up again immediately after closing it...)

How does Aspose handle this? If we open a file (read only if we can) using Aspose.Words will this interfere with a user opening and editing the same file?

Many Thanks

Patrick

Aspose.Words keeps the document open only for the brief period of time (fractions of a second) while it is loading the document into memory.

If you give Aspose.Words a file name to load, then it opens the file in read only non exclusive mode. Alternatively, you can open a stream in any mode you want and give the stream to Aspose.Words to load from.

From what I know MS Word opens a file in exclusive mode. If a document is opened by a user in MS Word, Aspose.Words will not be able to open the document. But you should verify this yourself.