Thanks a lot to both of you for your thoughts on the matter. Very much appreciated.
I guess I'll have to thoroughly discuss what the clients needs are before making a final decision... It's still unclear whether the data is database only... Thanks again On Aug 20, 1:21 pm, Pat Allan <[email protected]> wrote: > I think what Christian's here is pretty much spot on. If you're going > to use Java, then (I'm guessing - I'm not a Java developer) Compass is > a good choice. However, from a Ruby perspective, you can either take > Solr or Ferret to talk to Lucene, and I don't hear rave reviews about > either (especially Ferret. Solr I sometimes hear good things about). > > Lucene has a lot of extra complexity and features - which is good, if > you need them. Sphinx is a lot more streamlined, and I've tried to > make Thinking Sphinx as easy as possible to use without needing to > delve too deep into Sphinx. Whether everyone agrees with that, I've no > idea :) Also, it depends what features you need. If you aren't just > dealing with indexing data in a database, then Sphinx isn't the right > tool for the job (well, it handles XML, but Thinking Sphinx doesn't > provide hooks to that currently). > > So, if you're using Rails, then please do try Thinking Sphinx and > Sphinx - they may provide all the features you need. > > -- > Pat > > On 20/08/2009, at 1:57 PM, Christian Aust wrote: > > > > > Hi Xavier, > > > I've done only Java/Lucene development before I came to Rails and > > discovered Sphinx. > > > Lucene (and even better: Compass) is indeed rock-solid and a good > > choice for a general-purpose search solution. I've implemented search > > indexes holding literally many millions of documents, and it worked > > seamlessly on modest hardware. > > > That being said, Ferret (which is the Lucene port to Ruby) seems to be > > a totally different beast. I've heard people talking about stability > > issues, with indexes crashing every now and then. Sphinx seems to be a > > lot more stable and a good choice for the average database-bound rails > > application. > > > My problem with Sphinx is exactly this database-centric approach. > > Lucene allows you to store in the index whatever you like, stuff from > > the database, from a file system, even data generated at runtime; it > > simply doesn't matter. Setup a document model and you're good to go. > > If you happen to work on a J2EE application with JavaBeans and all > > that jive, your beans can serve as a document model for Lucene/ > > Compass, which is very nice. DRY in Java, one might say. > > > Working with Lucene from JRuby would mean to have an implementation of > > the Lucene document model in Ruby; I'm not sure if you could use the > > ActiveRecord model for that. So you'd end up maintaining two > > indentical object models, one for ActiveRecord and the other one for > > Lucene. Not DRY. > > > Conclusion: If your data happens to be in the database only, Sphinx > > can be a good choice. It's stemmer support is not as good as Lucenes, > > but YMMV. Implementing Lucene would most probably mean extra effort. > > However, if your application needs to build an index that includes > > non- > > SQL data, Sphinx might not be for you. But hey, you could implement > > the Lucene search using a REST interface and use ActiveResource to > > work with it in ruby. > > > Just my $.02 Regards, > > > Christian > > > On 20 Aug., 14:28, Xavier Tô <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi > > >> I'm working on a project which requires a search engine for the > >> content of the database. A Java fan is pushing for Lucene with > >> Compass. Since the project will be a Rails project, I'd like to use a > >> Ruby/Rails world approach rather than going with JRuby or Java. > > >> My question is : How does (Thinking) Sphinx compares to a solution > >> like Compass ? I know my question might not apply that much to this > >> group, but I'm trying anyways. > > >> Thanks ! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thinking Sphinx" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/thinking-sphinx?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
