[Xapian-discuss] xapian vs lucene.net

[Charlie Hull]

Olly Betts wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 12:16:20PM -0800, Oscar Usifer wrote:
>> http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/xtf/Search_Engine_Comparison.pdf
> 
> I've read this comparison before - it's kind of shallow, with a number
> of inaccuracies (at least for Xapian - I don't really know enough about
> most of the other software to say).  It also appears to be written to
> guide the choice of software for a particular use by a particular
> organisation - for example, "Java" is listed a factor in favour of
> Lucene, but (language religion aside) being written in Java isn't an
> advantage for every potential user.
> 
> It fails to include any source code or test data, or even give much
> information at all on how tests were performed (I can't even seem to
> see a spec for the test machine), so it's impossible to actually repeat
> the tests.  This also means it's hard to know if they're actually
> comparing like-for-like.
> 
We've come up with a couple of cases where potential customers were 
comparing Xapian to Lucene, and it would be very valuable to have a more 
up-to-date comparison, including such things as performance data. We're 
looking into doing this, or asking someone else to do it.

One major difference is the visibility of Xapian compared to Lucene; 
even without comparative data, people seem initially to prefer the idea 
of an engine that gets more hits on Google....

Charlie