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Xapian: Open source search engine library

xapian.org

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Re: Xapian: Open source search engine library

#2
Xapian is nice. I've used it before to add interactive autocomplete to a Python web app, since my previous favourite, Whoosh, is unmaintained and somehow slower than grep on a folder (I remember it being pretty fast years back, I'd love to know what happened).

I'd say my favourite thing about Xapian is that it's just a simple library you can embed in any app, no need for a separate database and JVM tuning. For simple usecases and small-to-medium datasets, it just works.

Re: Xapian: Open source search engine library

#7

This project has been around and maintained for more than a decade! Small footprint, good speed. One downside might be GPL v2 for commercial use.

In fact, AIUI it's roots go back about 3 decades. The "about" page has a nice historical overview.-

Re: Xapian: Open source search engine library

#8

This project has been around and maintained for more than a decade! Small footprint, good speed. One downside might be GPL v2 for commercial use.

The project at one point started tracking files for potential rewrite to rid itself of GPL history. I used it many years ago and I quite enjoyed it (pre elastic search times) but unfortunately the license situation didn’t help the project to become popular.

Re: Xapian: Open source search engine library

#9

This project has been around and maintained for more than a decade! Small footprint, good speed. One downside might be GPL v2 for commercial use.

You can always build a small search webservice that you open source and that your proprietary software calls out too, removing the need to open source everything.

Linux is GPL too, didn't hinder companies making trillions on top of it.

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