Full-text search

lastmod 2025-02-19created 2024-11-214 edits

Full-text search is a technique in text retrieval for searching documents stored on a computer or a full-text database. Full-text search is distinguished from searches based on metadata or on parts of the original text represented in a database (e.g., titles, abstracts, selected sections, footnotes).

In a full-text search, a search engine examines the contents of all stored documents and tries to match search criteria, for example text specified by the user. Full-text search techniques became common in online bibliographic databases in the 1990s. Many websites and applications (e.g., word processor software) provide full-text search. Some web search engines, such as AltaVista, use full-text search techniques, while others index only a portion of the web pages examined by their indexing systems.

Projects

• Apache Lucene
  • ElasticSearch
• Apache Solr
• ArangoSearch
• BaseX
• KinoSearch
• Lemur/Indri
• MariaDB
• mnoGoSearch
• MySQL
• OpenSearch
• PostgreSQL:FTS
• Searchdaimon
• Sphinx
• Swish-e
• Terrier IR Platform
• Xapian
• SQLite:FTS5 - Full-Text Search for SQLite
• Whoosh (Pure Python)
• recoll - Full-text search tool for the desktop
• Buzee - Full-text search application available for Mac and Windows

See also

• Search engine
• Web search engine
• Pattern matching
• String-searching algorithm
• Information retrieval
• Web crawler

Favorite site

• Full-text search - Wikipedia