Apache Lucene
| File:Apache Lucene logo.svg Logo since March 2021 | |
| Company type | Open-source software project |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software, Search engine technology |
| Founded | 1999 |
| Founder | Doug Cutting |
| Headquarters | United States |
| Products | Search engine library, full-text indexing, fuzzy search |
| Owner | Apache Software Foundation |
| Website | lucene |
Apache Lucene is a free and open-source software library designed for search engine functionality, initially created in Java by Doug Cutting. Backed by the Apache Software Foundation and distributed under the Apache Software License, Lucene forms the core technology behind numerous commercial search solutions.
The library has been ported to various programming languages such as Object Pascal, Perl, C#, C++, Python, Ruby, and PHP, thereby broadening its applicability across multiple development platforms.
History
Doug Cutting developed Lucene in 1999, marking his fifth search engine project after previous work at Xerox PARC, Apple, and Excite. Originally hosted on SourceForge, Lucene became part of the Apache Software Foundation's Jakarta in September 2001 and was promoted to a top-level Apache project by February 2005. The name "Lucene" is inspired by the middle name of Cutting's wife as well as her maternal grandmother’s first name.
Earlier versions of Lucene included sub-projects such as Lucene.NET, Mahout, Tika, and Nutch, which have since evolved into independent top-level projects. In March 2010, the search server Apache Solr was incorporated as a Lucene sub-project, unifying their developer communities. The release of version 4.0 occurred on October 12, 2012.
In March 2021, Lucene introduced a new logo design, while Apache Solr resumed its role as a separate top-level project within Apache.
Features and common use
Lucene is extensively utilized for full-text indexing and search functionalities, commonly powering both internet search engines and local site searches. Among its features is fuzzy searching implemented through edit distance techniques.
In addition to search applications, Lucene facilitates recommendation systems; its 'MoreLikeThis' class is used to suggest documents with similar content. Unlike citation-based similarity approaches such as co-citation analysis—which often recommend loosely related or serendipitous documents especially when in-text citations are present—Lucene’s method relies on term vectors to identify documents sharing closely related structural attributes.
Lucene-based projects
As an indexing and search library, Lucene does not inherently provide web crawling or HTML parsing capabilities. Various projects build upon Lucene to deliver enterprise-grade and specialized search solutions:
- Apache Nutch – incorporates web crawling and HTML parsing functions
- Apache Solr – a widely adopted enterprise search server utilized in commercial environments
- CrateDB – an open-source distributed SQL database leveraging Lucene for scalable data handling
- DocFetcher – a cross-platform desktop search application
- Elasticsearch – launched in 2010, this enterprise search server is recognized for its distributed search and analytics features
- Kinosearch – a Perl and C-based search engine employed by wiki platforms like Socialtext and MojoMojo, as well as scientific databases including the Human Metabolome Database (HMDB) and Toxin and Toxin-Target Database (T3DB)
- MongoDB Atlas Search – a cloud-native enterprise search solution integrating MongoDB with Apache Lucene technology
- OpenSearch – an open-source enterprise search server forked from Elasticsearch version 7
- Swiftype – an enterprise search startup built on Lucene technology
These examples highlight Lucene’s widespread integration across database systems, cloud infrastructures, and domain-specific scientific tools.
See also
Bibliography
- Gospodnetic, Otis; Hatcher, Erik; McCandless, Michael. Lucene in Action, Second Edition, Manning Publications, 2009, ISBN 978-1-9339-8817-7
- Gospodnetic, Otis; Hatcher, Erik. Lucene in Action, First Edition, Manning Publications, 2004, ISBN 978-1-9323-9428-3
External links
- Articles with short description
- Pages with broken file links
- Apache Software Foundation projects
- Free search engine software
- Java (programming language) libraries
- C Sharp libraries
- Cross-platform software
- Software using the Apache license
- Search engine software
- Pascal (programming language) software
- 1999 software