Search engine that works with MS SQL Server

rubyonrails-talk
1

Why don't you use a full text search engine that doesn't require a database -> Welcome to Apache Solr - Apache Solr

Can't understand why people still try to use Sphinx, when it doesn't get any near Solr's features and doesn't update the indexes on the fly.

2

Why don't you use a full text search engine that doesn't require a database -> Welcome to Apache Solr - Apache Solr

Can't understand why people still try to use Sphinx, when it doesn't get any near Solr's features and doesn't update the indexes on the fly.

Last time I looked (admittedly a while back) sphinx was noticeably
faster at indexing (eg see Evan Weaver   and Percona Database Performance Blog   ).

As far as the original question goes Sphinx doesn't have to be able to
talk to your database if you can provide a command line tool that will
produce an appropriately formatted xml stream for sphinx.

Fred

3

And it still is faster at indexing, as it isn't capable of on-the-fly updates (if something changes, you´ll have to rebuild your index).

I see Sphinx as an option if your full text search functionality isn't that complicated (Sphinx can't do partial matches or fuzzy search) or your indexed models don't change much.

Solr is a full blown full text search tool with most of the features you'll see in "enterprise" tools like fuzzy searching (that enables things like Google's "did you mean?" feature), stop words removal, faceting and a simple way to write your own customized filters (and loads of documentations if you need to tweak it).

I tried Ferret and it had loads of problems, specially with concurrent access, tried Sphinx but the lack of on-the-fly updates, partial maches (there's a hack to get this working, but it's a hack) and fuzzy search lead me to try Solr and now I have no reason to look back :slight_smile:

4

Maurício Linhares wrote:

Solr is a full blown full text search tool with most of the features you'll see in "enterprise" tools like fuzzy searching (that enables

...

I will give Solr a go, thanks. One of the things I like about ThinkingSphinx though is the ability to combine Sphinx's free-text searching with other search criterias on other attributes in the model. But I can probably do that myself in another way.

- Carsten