On Microsoft Index Server, you need to create catalogs and add directories to index. It is easy to do it from the MMC snap-in, but how do you do it from Delphi, in case you need to automate it?

Creating catalogs is *very* easy.

For simply creating a catalog, and adding a directory, use the following code:

uses
  comobj;

var
  Admin,catAdm:Olevariant;
begin
  admin:=CreateOleObject('Microsoft.ISAdm');
  admin.Stop; //must be stopped when adding
  catAdm:=admin.AddCatalog('test','c:\catalog');
  catAdm.AddScope('c:\index',wordbool(false));
  admin.Start;
end;

  This will create a new catalog 'test', on directory c:\catalog, and add
files on c:\index. Use wordbool(true) if you don't want this directory to be indexed.

  Note that you must stop the Indexing Service (by using Admin.Stop) before adding catalogs.

See this article for instructions on how to search on Index Server.

Also search at MSDN for AdminIndexServer for further uses for this object.
You can see all catalogs, enable indexing service to start automatically, check the status of a catalog, etc.