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The other group of available software, both free and commercial, is assembled into prepackaged products. Such software usually doesn't expose a lot of its API and doesn't require you to build a custom application on top of it. Most of this software exposes a mechanism that lets you control a limited set of parameters but not enough to use the software in a way that's drastically different from its assumed use. (To be fair, there are notable exceptions to this rule).
As such, we can't compare this software to Lucene directly. However, some of these products may be sufficient for your needs and let you get running quickly, even if Lucene or some other IR library turns out to be a better choice in the long run. Here's a short list of several popular products in this category:
The previous sections provide only brief overviews of the related products. Several resources will help you find other IR libraries and products beyond those we've mentioned:
DMOZ - At the DMOZ Open Directory Project (ODP), you'll find http:// dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Information_Retrieval/ and all its subcategories very informative.
Google - Although Google Directory is based on the Open Directory's data, the two directories do differ. So, you should also visit http://directory.google. com/Top/Computers/Software/Information_Retrieval/.
Searchtools - There is a web site dedicated to search tools at http://www. searchtools.com/. This web site isn't always up to date, but it has been around for years and is fairly comprehensive. Software is categorized by operating system, programming language, licenses, and so on. If you're interested only in search software written in Java, visit http://www.searchtools.com/ tools/tools-java.html.
We've provided positive reviews of some alternatives to Lucene, but we're confident that your requisite homework will lead you to Lucene as the best choice!
In this chapter, you’ve gained some basic Lucene knowledge. You now know that Lucene is an Information Retrieval library, not a ready-to-use product, and that it most certainly is not a web crawler, as people new to Lucene sometimes think. You’ve also learned a bit about how Lucene came to be and about the key people and the organization behind it.
In the spirit of Manning’s in Action books, we quickly got to the point by showing
you two standalone applications, Indexer and Searcher, which are capable of
indexing and searching text files stored in a file system. We then briefly
described each of the Lucene classes used in these two applications. Finally, we
presented our research findings for some products similar to Lucene.
Search is everywhere, and chances are that if you’re reading this book, you’re interested in search being an integral part of your applications. Depending on your needs, integrating Lucene may be trivial, or it may involve architectural considerations We’ve organized the next couple of chapters as we did this chapter. The first thing we need to do is index some documents; we discuss this process in detail in chapter 2.
Written by Otis Gospodnetic and Erik Hatcher and reproduced from "Lucene in Action" by permission of Manning Publications Co. ISBN 1932394281, copyright 2004. All rights reserved. See http://www.manning.com for more information.
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