4 ms·

It's totally fine that many people consider stuff bloat, but other people don't. I've built a highly specialised search engine for manufacturing companies on to

by 9dev 4y ago

It's totally fine that many people consider stuff bloat, but other people don't. I've built a highly specialised search engine for manufacturing companies on top of Elasticsearch, and I decidedly need vector queries, TF-IDF queries, geospatial range queries, and heaps of other, niche features you probably never used before. Having a lightweight search engine is fine, but calling it an alternative to Elasticsearch is not doing either justice.

ianbutler 4y ago
That's very assumptive of you. I have in fact used most of those features, and note I said their opinion was not wrong. In their readme they said it's a replacement for some use cases which is upfront and fine. Vector queries aren't niche, Elastic however only tacked on a proper (non HNSW) implementation in the last year and a half. Geospatial isn't niche, anyone working with location data will work with those queries. TF-IDF is a basic ranking algo / signal. Maybe Elasticsearch is good for you because they have all their features in aggregate. But I can name a tool that focuses specifically on each area and query type and is better for that specific subset of functionality. So my point still stands, if all you need are specific features Elastic is too much. You need all of it and that's fine too.
- pbowyer 4y ago
  > But I can name a tool that focuses specifically on each area and query type and is better for that specific subset of functionality. Please do name them, because I for one would like to never run ElasticSearch again for faceted, full-text and specialised search.
- sanxiyn 4y ago
  I mean, Sonic doesn't store term frequency at all, so it can't do TF-IDF. It probably doesn't want to. If you need any ranking other than latest first, Sonic is not for you.
- _tom_ 4y ago
  The problem with subsets is everyone wants a different subset. It's my popular software almost always bloats. Everyone wants some different features.

by 9dev 4y ago

ianbutler 4y ago

That's very assumptive of you. I have in fact used most of those features, and note I said their opinion was not wrong. In their readme they said it's a replacement for some use cases which is upfront and fine. Vector queries aren't niche, Elastic however only tacked on a proper (non HNSW) implementation in the last year and a half. Geospatial isn't niche, anyone working with location data will work with those queries. TF-IDF is a basic ranking algo / signal. Maybe Elasticsearch is good for you because they have all their features in aggregate. But I can name a tool that focuses specifically on each area and query type and is better for that specific subset of functionality. So my point still stands, if all you need are specific features Elastic is too much. You need all of it and that's fine too.

pbowyer 4y ago
> But I can name a tool that focuses specifically on each area and query type and is better for that specific subset of functionality. Please do name them, because I for one would like to never run ElasticSearch again for faceted, full-text and specialised search.
sanxiyn 4y ago
I mean, Sonic doesn't store term frequency at all, so it can't do TF-IDF. It probably doesn't want to. If you need any ranking other than latest first, Sonic is not for you.
_tom_ 4y ago
The problem with subsets is everyone wants a different subset. It's my popular software almost always bloats. Everyone wants some different features.