SharePoint and SPS3, SPS3S, STS3, STS3S, BDC, BDC2, File, RB, RBS, Notes Protocols

The SPS3 Protocol

The SPS3 protocol is used for crawling people profiles (e.g., those defined in the SSP) to support the “People Search” functionality in the MOSS Enterprise Search.
This protocol is used to index WSS 3.0 server farms (which MOSS 2007 is layered on top of )

“People Profiles” are at the SSP level:

This profile spans multiple Site Collections (all those web applications/site collections within the SSP)
The “My Site” commonly exposes the ability for people to edit their own information through the “My Profile” tab
Note that the WSS profile is not the same as the SSP profile information
The WSS profile information is the information that you can edit from the

The SPS3 protocol commonly shows up when you define the content sources for the SSP

Some examples:
sps3://mysite.yourdomain.com/
sps3://www.yourdomain.com/mysite/
sps3://my.yourdomain.com/

Note, that if you are using SSL on your My Site host headers, the SPS3 protocol should not be used, and you should change your content source to use the SPS3S protocol instead.

The protocol handlers (that ship out-of-the-box with MOSS 2007) translate the content source url from sps3:// into a web service call sps3://mysite.yourdomain.com is actually crawled on the web front end by the indexer using a SOAP call to the web service http://mysite.yourdomain.com/_vti_bin/spscrawl.asmx ( the SPS3 SOAP call is made using HTTP protocol on TCP Port 56737 )

The SPS3S Protocol

The SPS3S protocol is used when you have enabled SSL for the My Sites, and is used for crawling people profiles (e.g., those defined in the SSP) to support the “People Search” functionality in the MOSS Enterprise Search. This protocol is used to index WSS 3.0 server farms using SSL (which MOSS 2007 is layered on top of )

Some examples:
sps3s://www.yourdomain.com/
sps3s://www.yourdomain.com/mysite/
sps3s://my.yourdomain.com/

The protocol handlers (that ship out-of-the-box with MOSS 2007) translate the content source url from sps3s:// into a web service call sps3s://mysite.yourdomain.com is actually crawled on the web front end by the indexer using a SOAP call to the web service https://mysite.yourdomain.com/_vti_bin/spscrawl.asmx ( the SPS3S SOAP call is made using HTTP protocol on TCP Port 56738 with SSL encryption )

The STS3 Protocol

The STS3 protocol is used for crawling SharePoint content without having to have URL links that lead to every possible content item in the web site. This protocol is used to index WSS 3.0 server farms (which MOSS 2007 is layered on top of ) STS3 protocol achieves this by using the Site Data Web service to determine all the content in your SharePoint site.

Some examples:
sts3://www.yourdomain.com/
sts3://www.yourdomain.com/teamsites/
sts3://portal.yourdomain.com/

The protocol handlers (that ship out-of-the-box with MOSS 2007) translate the content source url from sts3:// into a web service call sts3://www.yourdomain.com is actually crawled on the web front end by using the web service http://mysite.yourdomain.com/_vti_bin/sitedata.asmx ( the STS3 SOAP call is made using HTTP protocol on TCP Port 56737 )

Note, that if you are using SSL on your Site host headers, and you do not expose the pages through non-SSL URLs, the STS3 protocol should not be used, and you should change your content source to use the STS3S protocol instead.

The STS3S Protocol

The STS3S protocol is used for crawling SharePoint content that is exposed using SSL, without having to have URL links that lead to every possible content item in the web site. This protocol is used to index WSS 3.0 server farms using SSL (which MOSS 2007 is layered on top of ) STS3S protocol achieves this by using the Site Data Web service to determine all the content in your SharePoint site.

Some examples:
sts3s://www.yourdomain.com/
sts3s://www.yourdomain.com/teamsites/
sts3s://portal.yourdomain.com/

The protocol handlers (that ship out-of-the-box with MOSS 2007) translate the content source url from sts3s:// into a web service call sts3s://www.yourdomain.com is actually crawled on the web front end by the indexer using a SOAP call to the web service https://mysite.yourdomain.com/_vti_bin/spscrawl.asmx ( the STS3S SOAP call is made using HTTP protocol on TCP Port 56738 with SSL encryption )

Other protocols such as the following are also explained in the Microsoft Press book mentioned above:

BDC protocol BDC:// Used for Business Data Catalog URLs{ available only in the Enterprise edition of MOSS 2007 }

BDC2 protocol BDC2:// Used for Business Data Catalog URLs (an internal protocol){ available only in the Enterprise edition of MOSS 2007 }

File protocol File:// Used to index file shares

RB protocol RB:// Used to index Exchange Server public folders

RBS protocol RBS:// Used to index Exchange Server public folders over SSL

SPS protocol SPS:// Used to index people profiles from WSS 2.0 server farms

SPSS protocol SPSS:// Used to index people profiles from WSS 2.0 server farms over SSL

STS2 protocol STS2:// Used to index SharePoint content from WSS 2.0 sites

STS2S protocol STS2S:// Used to index SharePoint content from WSS 2.0 sites over SSL

Notes protocol NOTES:// Used to index Lotus Notes databases, and include this content in the MOSS Enterprise Search indexes

Reference

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointsearch/thread/2b760f44-3eed-4ab0-96fb-fdccffe0cfdd

Recommended book:

Inside the Index and Search Enginges: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Partick Tisseghem and Lars Fastrup
Microsoft Press
ISBN-13: 978-0-7356-2535-8
ISBN-10: 0-7356-2535-2

Chapter 9 Advanced Search Engine Topics (pages 526 to 527) in the Microsoft Press Book:
Inside the Index and Search Enginges: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Partick Tisseghem and Lars Fastrup
Microsoft Press
ISBN-13: 978-0-7356-2535-8
ISBN-10: 0-7356-2535-2