Flax Offers Alternative to dtSearch
May 18, 2012
An apparent alternative to dtSearch, with modifications for scale, positional information, and other factors, has been developed.
Flax, self-proclaimed Open Source Search Specialists, has developed an alternative to the closed source text retrieval software. According to a blog post on the company site, “An Open Source Replacement for the dtSearch Closed Source Search Engine,” the new search engine was built for a client who needed the query language to match the old system. The catch? The source code is not available for public download.
The article describes the development:
“First, we developed a new Lucene Analyzer that speaks the same syntax as dtSearch, allowing us to index text input. On the search side we have a Lucene QueryParser that shares this syntax. To make it easier to use we’ve wrapped the whole lot in a modified Solr server. As we needed some features of very recent Lucene code, our modifications are based on a patch to Lucene trunk (and so the source code isn’t for the faint hearted – if you need it let us know, but we’re not currently providing it for download).”
A downloadable WAR file is available from Flax’s downloads area.
Flax states that this project shows it is possible, and even faster and more economically sound, to move to an open source alternative, regardless of investment in current search. We agree and are interested to see further developments from Flax and others who are willing to tackle the project.
Andrea Hayden, May 18, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
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One Response to “Flax Offers Alternative to dtSearch”
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Thanks for the writeup – regarding the source code, we’re going to try and keep up with Lucene trunk and have already submitted some patches to Apache, so hopefully in the future everything can be open sourced.