I am not going to get religious on what a database is but the facts seem to be that what GAE calls “Search API” is a Key/Value store service with APIs to store values (which are records/documents with fields), retrieve records/documents based on keys AND/OR retrieve records/documents using a query language very well suited for text based fields.
Therefore it is really a way to store and retrieve data and I find it confusing that it stands out there on its own with a misleading name… For a long time, and before looking at the API, I thought it was a service that allows searching over data stored in other services that store data (datastore, cloudSQL, cloudstorage,..) Anyways, Google can call it whatever you want, just my 2c and an attempt to make sure I am not missing something fundamental as I plan to start using the “Search API” in addition to the datastore that I have been using and understand very well. > On Jan 22, 2016, at 10:51 AM, Nick (Cloud Platform Support) > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hey PK, > > The Search API is not quite a database. The Search API provides a model for > indexing documents which contain structured data. A model is simply an object > that contains a unique id and user defined fields. The index is the means by > which that document can be quickly interrogated and information retrieved via > query. That means that you basically have a pipeline that tokenizes the > document, and then a separate pipeline that retrieves the token via query. > > In the documentation there is quite a lot of information about how the Search > API works, but very little about its implementation, and unfortunately we > don't reveal such information. It would probably be best to code against the > API as an abstraction. Feel free to check out some of the documentation links > below (and be sure to use the side-bar in the docs to browse other topics > related to the Search API): > > [1] https://cloud.google.com/appengine/training/fts_adv/ > [2] https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/python/search/ > [3] https://cloud.google.com/appengine/training/fts_adv/lesson1 > [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE6gb5pqr1k > > On Friday, January 22, 2016 at 1:35:48 AM UTC-5, PK wrote: > I find very interesting that while the so called Search API is really a > database for documents with a query engine, it is not presented in the > “Storing data” section of the documentation of GAE. Also unlike a lot of > documentation on how Paxos is used underneath the Datastore to provide high > availability even in the event of catastrophic failure of one data center, I > have not found much on the architecture of the search API store. > > Does anybody have any pointers to such material? > > Thanks, > PK > [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Google App Engine" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine > <https://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-appengine/8464dc3e-b636-4f0a-a1a6-ef4831c28b1a%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-appengine/8464dc3e-b636-4f0a-a1a6-ef4831c28b1a%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. PK [email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-appengine/4775057A-5C6C-4D7D-9662-6807B443B935%40gae123.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
