Distributed search engines

Distributed search engines, such as Elasticsearch based on Apache Lucene, transform data into highly-optimized data structures for quick and efficient searching and analysis. In Apache Lucene, data is indexed into documents containing one or more fields representing analyzed data attributes of various data types. A collection of documents forms an index, and it is this index that is searched when queries are processed, returning the relevant documents that fulfill the query. A suitable analogy would be when trying to find pages relating to a specific topic in a textbook. Instead of searching every page one by one, the reader may instead use the index at the back of the book to find relevant pages quicker. To learn more about Apache Lucene, please visit http://lucene.apache.org/.

Elasticsearch extends Apache Lucene by offering the ability to partition and horizontally scale search indexes and analytical queries over a distributed cluster, coupled with a RESTful search engine and HTTP web interface for high-performance searching and analysis. To learn more about Elasticsearch, please visit https://www.elastic.co/products/elasticsearch.