I suspect you have no programming background; which explains your epic fail here. Drupal is a CMS. Content Management System. I repeat. Content Management System. It's not for you to make a web-app upon, though it's possible; it would be a pain in the ass, why would you want to make your life difficult? It's like getting your ass raped by 10" black cock. Drupal search module is to search its own shit, it's not designed to automatically figure how to search your web app data.
To build a web-app, you shouldn't, or rather, cannot base it on Wordpress or Drupal, or any kind of CMS/blogging platforms. Anyone who says the otherwise is very likely fucking stupid piece of shit.
I do not consider myself to be a developer. Even if I did and you understood all the functionality that's built into the site behind-the-scenes there is no way I could have put this together in a reasonable time frame going the custom route. I have spoken to a very senior developer about the project and he agrees that this was the right approach at this time. As I've said it is a Minimal Viable Product. If it grows legs and I see real potential in it I may rebuild it from scratch or have someone else do just that. I actually started it initially on the CodeIgniter framework, but decided to switch it up so I could actually make some progress on it in my free time. I am confident that I will find a good search solution or I will customize the native one to meet my need when the time is right.
I understand that you would not use Drupal, but for me it makes my life easier and so I will continue to do so until it is no longer an option, but thus far it has been a spectacular option for me and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Open Atrium is a perfect example of a full-blown web app built on Drupal as its framework.
You definitely can build a web app in Drupal, whether you should or not depends upon a wide array of circumstances. Drupal is an extremely versatile form of a CMS. WordPress isn't, nor is Joomla. Drupal is really in its own category. I know because I have extensive experience w/ all three of them.
Ben Buckman summarizes it very well:
"-The differences between frameworks and robust CMSs are not well defined, and Drupal straddles the line between them.
-The test of whether a toolkit is a framework is whether the following question yields an affirmative answer: “Can I use this toolkit to build a given application?” Drupal clearly does.
-The exclusion reflects a kind of coder-purist snobbery ("it's not a framework if you build any of it in a UI") and lack of knowledge about Drupal's underlying code framework."
In any case, chill the fuck out man!
