As I understand it, to enable PDF indexing in WSS, I need to install Adobe PDF IFilter on the database server (my front-end web server and database server are on separate machines) since WSS uses SQL full-text indexing. I have a few of questions about this:

1. Is a reboot required on the database server after the IFilter install?

2. According to KB323040 (support.microsoft.com/default.aspx), there are threading issues associated with using Adobe IFilter 5 and SQL Server indexing, but I planned to install IFilter 6 (the latest version). Has anyone experienced the issues described in the KB article with IFilter 6?

3. I have seen conflicting claims about whether or not existing PDFs in your WSS site need to be deleted and uploaded again to ensure that they are indexed properly after the IFilter install. One site said that I could force the indexing of existing PDFs with this command:

USE <name of wss content db or sps “site” database>

EXEC sp_fulltext_catalog '<existing sql server index catalog name>', 'rebuild'

On the same site another person suggested this workaround:

Step 1. Turn off full-text indexing in WSS.

Step 2. Wait for SQL Server to drop the existing index catalog.

Step 3. Turn on full-text indexing in WSS.

I’d prefer to force re-indexing of my existing PDFs if at all possible (I have thousands of PDFs in WSS already). Any advice on this issue in particular would be much appreciated.