# Road map of ferret **URL:** \ **Category:** Ferret\ **Created:** [August 19, 2008, 9:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298 "2008-08-19T21:29:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 9:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/1 "2008-08-19T21:29:52Z")
Hi all, I’m new on the list, and glad to participate. I would like to make some questions about the ferret project… - Is the [http://ferret.davebalmain.com/](http://ferret.davebalmain.com/) official page of the project? (I’m always getting 502 Bad Gateway) - Where I can find the road map of the project? - In the [http://rubyforge.org/projects/ferret/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/ferret/) I see the last realize was in November 28, 2007, that is true? - Is ferret discontinued? Please don’t take this questions as offensive, I really like to know about how ferret is reliable for a long life product. Here on my company we are planning to make a big product with a indexing engine, I would like to know if the ferret is “alive”. Thanks for the answers! – Atenciosamente - Best regards, Fernando Luiz Parisotto ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2008, 4:51am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/2 "2008-08-20T04:51:10Z")
I Think many people here have the same questions. Fernando Parisotto wrote: > - Is the [http://ferret.davebalmain.com/](http://ferret.davebalmain.com/) official page of the project? > (I’m > always getting 502 Bad Gateway) > - Where I can find the road map of the project? > - In the [http://rubyforge.org/projects/ferret/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/ferret/) I see the last realize > was in > November 28, 2007, that is true? > - Is ferret discontinued? ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2008, 2:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/3 "2008-08-20T14:48:04Z")
I have the same questions about ferret. ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 4:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/4 "2008-08-27T16:33:44Z")
I’ve been using Ferret in a project still under development, and it works pretty well. As far as I can tell, the project is dying, if not already dead. David B. is still the only listed developer, and he seems to have moved on to other things. However, since the software is still meeting my project’s needs, I am not terribly bothered by that. I suppose that eventually (in a few years?) something will change enough that Ferret will stop working, and then we’ll have to find something else. If you can find an alternative that has active development, I would recommend you go with that. (And if you find one, please post about it.) But, if you can’t, Ferret will probably be good enough for a while. On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 3:24 PM, Fernando Parisotto [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > * * * > > Ferret-talk mailing list > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > [http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk](http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk) – Paul L. Aquilent, Inc. National Library of Medicine (Contractor) ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 5:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/5 "2008-08-27T17:58:13Z")
On Aug 27, 2008, at 8:20 AM, Eric S. wrote: > If anyone knows of any ruby IR projects which are mature, and are > being actively developed I would love to hear about them. FWIW, I recently finished porting all module code in KinoSearch to C. If we write binding code and port the test suite, it will be usable from Ruby. KinoSearch is sort of a sister project to Ferret. The dev branch implements many of the ideas that Dave Balmain and I designed together for the Lucy project. Marvin H. Rectangular Research [http://www.rectangular.com/](http://www.rectangular.com/) ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 5:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/6 "2008-08-27T17:21:15Z")
I would also be interested in Ferret alternatives for IR in ruby, a simple search on rubyforge returned mainly a bunch of projects that look to be abandoned… - Rise (does not appear to be actively developed) - rubylucene (looks to be a dead project) - Ruby Simple Indexer (also looks dead) - Ruby Odeum (simple ruby-bindings for a fast inverted index) If anyone knows of any ruby IR projects which are mature, and are being actively developed I would love to hear about them. Thanks – Eric On Wednesday, August 27, at 10:29, Paul L. wrote: > I’ve been using Ferret in a project still under development, and it > works pretty well. As far as I can tell, the project is dying, if > not > already dead. David B. is still the only listed developer, and > he seems to have moved on to other things. However, since the > software is still meeting my project’s needs, I am not terribly > bothered by that. I suppose that eventually (in a few years?) > something will change enough that Ferret will stop working, and then > we’ll have to find something else. > > If you can find an alternative that has active development, I would > recommend you go with that. (And if you find one, please post about > it.) But, if you can’t, Ferret will probably be good enough for a > while. > > On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 3:24 PM, Fernando Parisotto > [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > Hi all, > > > > I’m new on the list, and glad to participate. > > I would like to make some questions about the ferret project… > > > > - Is the [http://ferret.davebalmain.com/](http://ferret.davebalmain.com/) official page of the > > project? (I’m > > always getting 502 Bad Gateway) > > - Where I can find the road map of the project? > > - In the [http://rubyforge.org/projects/ferret/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/ferret/) I see the last > > realize was in > > November 28, 2007, that is true? > > - Is ferret discontinued? > > > > Please don’t take this questions as offensive, I really like to > > know about > > how ferret is reliable for a long life product. > > Here on my company we are planning to make a big product with a > > indexing > > engine, I would like to know if the ferret is “alive”. > > Thanks for the answers! > > > > – > > Atenciosamente - Best regards, > > > > Fernando Luiz Parisotto > > > > * * * > > > > Ferret-talk mailing list > > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > > [http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk](http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk) > > – > Paul L. > Aquilent, Inc. > National Library of Medicine (Contractor) > > * * * > > Ferret-talk mailing list > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > [http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk](http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk) ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 6:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/7 "2008-08-27T18:12:53Z")
Reformatted excerpts from Eric S.'s message of 2008-08-27: > If anyone knows of any ruby IR projects which are mature, and are > being actively developed I would love to hear about them. > **[Sphinx | Open Source Search Engine](http://sphinxsearch.com)** > > Sphinx is an open source full text search server, designed with performance, relevance (search quality), > and integration simplicity in mind. Sphinx lets you either batch index and search data stored in files, an SQL database, NoSQL storage -- > or... Much less useable API than Ferret, and you have to run it as a separate server process, but it’s fast, stable, and actively maintained. ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 6:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/8 "2008-08-27T18:22:16Z")
As far as I know, Sphinx only can only index tables that have a unique numeric id (e.g. and auto-incrementing int)… I looked at using it, but we use md5 hashes for the id/primary key on the tables I want to index… so we were out of luck. For what it’s worth, I use Ferret 0.11.6 and love it. I re-index about ~90 million rows (and growing) worth of “stuff” (title, description, author, etc…) every night… works like a champ. Searching is fast (provided you don’t want to sort on something other than relevance) and accurate. ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 6:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/9 "2008-08-27T18:07:35Z")
How bout Sphinx? ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 8:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/10 "2008-08-27T20:27:12Z")
Thanks for all the info, I just found a very good related discussion from ruby-forum which I thought I’d share [http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/137629](http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/137629) On Wednesday, August 27, at 11:57, arvind gautam wrote: > How bout Sphinx? > > On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 11:20 AM, Eric S. > [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)wrote: > > > I would also be interested in Ferret alternatives for IR in ruby, a > > simple search on rubyforge returned mainly a bunch of projects that > > look to be abandoned… > > > > - Rise (does not appear to be actively developed) > > - rubylucene (looks to be a dead project) > > - Ruby Simple Indexer (also looks dead) > > - Ruby Odeum (simple ruby-bindings for a fast inverted index) > > > > If anyone knows of any ruby IR projects which are mature, and are > > being actively developed I would love to hear about them. > > > > Thanks – Eric > > > > On Wednesday, August 27, at 10:29, Paul L. wrote: > > > > > I’ve been using Ferret in a project still under development, and > > > it > > > works pretty well. As far as I can tell, the project is dying, > > > if not > > > already dead. David B. is still the only listed developer, > > > and > > > he seems to have moved on to other things. However, since the > > > software is still meeting my project’s needs, I am not terribly > > > bothered by that. I suppose that eventually (in a few years?) > > > something will change enough that Ferret will stop working, and > > > then > > > we’ll have to find something else. > > > > > > If you can find an alternative that has active development, I > > > would > > > recommend you go with that. (And if you find one, please post > > > about > > > it.) But, if you can’t, Ferret will probably be good enough for > > > a > > > while. > > > > > > On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 3:24 PM, Fernando Parisotto > > > [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > > > > > Hi all, > > > > > > > > I’m new on the list, and glad to participate. > > > > I would like to make some questions about the ferret > > > > project… > > > > > > > > - Is the [http://ferret.davebalmain.com/](http://ferret.davebalmain.com/) official page of the > > > > project? > > > > (I’m > > > > always getting 502 Bad Gateway) > > > > - Where I can find the road map of the project? > > > > - In the [http://rubyforge.org/projects/ferret/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/ferret/) I see the last > > > > realize > > > > was in > > > > November 28, 2007, that is true? > > > > - Is ferret discontinued? > > > > > > > > Please don’t take this questions as offensive, I really like > > > > to know > > > > about > > > > how ferret is reliable for a long life product. > > > > Here on my company we are planning to make a big product with > > > > a > > > > indexing > > > > engine, I would like to know if the ferret is “alive”. > > > > Thanks for the answers! > > > > > > > > – > > > > Atenciosamente - Best regards, > > > > > > > > Fernando Luiz Parisotto > > > > > > > > * * * > > > > > > > > Ferret-talk mailing list > > > > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > > > > [http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk](http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk) > > > > > > – > > > Paul L. > > > Aquilent, Inc. > > > National Library of Medicine (Contractor) > > > > > > * * * > > > > > > Ferret-talk mailing list > > > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > > > [http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk](http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk) > > > > – > > schulte > > > > * * * > > > > Ferret-talk mailing list > > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid > > [http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk](http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ferret-talk) ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 9:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/11 "2008-08-27T21:28:44Z")
On Aug 27, 2008, at 11:36 AM, Eric S. wrote: > What is the status of the Lucy project? The dev branch of KinoSearch is basically Lucy. When Dave became unavailable, I didn’t really have anyone else to bounce ideas off of for Lucy (since it was a from-scratch project without a community), so I returned to the established KS community – but took the code base in the direction that Dave and I had worked out. My current plan is to make an official KinoSearch release for Perl, write some experimental bindings for other languages, achieve stability, then make KinoSearch the “maint” branch and Lucy the “dev” branch. > Also, I may be missing something obvious here, but I don’t understand > why there is no ruby API directly to the Lucene Java library, If you want to use Lucene, just go with Solr. Marvin H. Rectangular Research [http://www.rectangular.com/](http://www.rectangular.com/) ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2008, 12:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/12 "2008-08-28T12:12:13Z")
On Wed, 2008-08-27 at 08:34 -0700, Marvin H. wrote: > FWIW, I recently finished porting all module code in KinoSearch to C. > If we write binding code and port the test suite, it will be usable > from Ruby. > > KinoSearch is sort of a sister project to Ferret. The dev branch > implements many of the ideas that Dave Balmain and I designed together > for the Lucy project. Hi Marvin, In my experience the Ruby community is crying out for a “drop-in” replacement for Ferret. Sphinx is great, but different. Xapian looks good but doesn’t have the Ruby maturity of Ferret yet (especially considering acts\_as\_ferret). I keep coming across people using Ferret successfully but have little niggles here and there. Is KinoSearch something that could be a Ferret replacement? Or the foundations of a Ferret replacement? What are the differences between it and Ferret? Out of interest, what are the differences between it and the planned Lucy project (would be good to hear more about what your plans were for Lucy. Maybe it’ll inspire somebody else?) Do you happen to know if Dave is likely to work on Ferret again someday? I think we’ve seen some commits from him recentlyish but no word I’ve seen. Hope all is well. Thanks, ## John. [http://johnleach.co.uk](http://johnleach.co.uk) ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 8:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/13 "2008-08-27T20:37:11Z")
On Wednesday, August 27, at 08:34, Marvin H. wrote: > KinoSearch is sort of a sister project to Ferret. The dev branch > implements many of the ideas that Dave Balmain and I designed > together > for the Lucy project. What is the status of the Lucy project? A ruby api into the venerable library Lucene seems to be the obvious first step towards developing a truly stable effective IR solution for Ruby. The last update on the Lucy webpage [Apache Lucy](http://lucene.apache.org/lucy/) seems to be from 2006. Also, I may be missing something obvious here, but I don’t understand why there is no ruby API directly to the Lucene Java library, why would the only Lucene/Ruby API be to the C-port of lucene? Much Thanks – Eric ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2008, 12:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/14 "2008-08-28T12:27:28Z")
Hi, Le 28 août 08 à 12:11, John L. a écrit : > In my experience the Ruby community is crying out for a “drop-in” > replacement for Ferret. Sphinx is great, but different. Xapian looks > good but doesn’t have the Ruby maturity of Ferret yet (especially > considering acts\_as\_ferret). I keep coming across people using Ferret > successfully but have little niggles here and there. The best would probably be to have some of us dig into ferret and help to fix the remeaining bugs! I’d like to experiment with beanstalkd [http://xph.us/software/beanstalkd/](http://xph.us/software/beanstalkd/) which - I’ve been told - is a better alternative to Drb for background indexing. Still using ferret on many websites, and it’s so simple to use, why use something else ? ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2008, 2:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/15 "2008-08-28T14:28:37Z")
On Aug 27, 2008, at 11:20 AM, Eric S. wrote: > If anyone knows of any ruby IR projects which are mature, and are > being actively developed I would love to hear about them. disclaimer: highly opinionated response follows… 🙂 Solr is the way to go for Ruby projects\*. solr-ruby, if I do say so myself, ain’t half bad. It’s downright beautiful to interact with Solr via Ruby: [http://wiki.apache.org/solr/solr-ruby](http://wiki.apache.org/solr/solr-ruby). I have plenty of wishes for where solr-ruby could still evolve, so it’s not done yet. \* pragmatically I realize that another moving piece, especially a JVM, isn’t a good fit for many current production deployment environments. See below for my answer to that… Ferret is awesome, let me be clear about that! I have always loved it’s power, even beyond Lucene Java in some cases. But I’ve stuck with Lucene through the tough times and it’s always been good to me. Solr’s goodness on top of Lucene Java make it extremely compelling for every environment, be it Ruby, Python, Java itself, what have you. I’ve always been fonder of the JVM than native C stuff, and when Ferret went that direction I stuck with Java. acts\_as\_solr, however, hasn’t yet reached its potential - and my little hack that kick started it wasn’t really beneficial to the community, my apologies - since I basically “abandoned” it. But it ain’t half bad either thanks to Thiago’s hard work, and does make cake work out of RDBMS ↔ Solr, whereas it takes something this ugly to do it in Java: [http://wiki.apache.org/solr/DataImportHandler](http://wiki.apache.org/solr/DataImportHandler) (oh Ruby how I love you!). Solr is incredibly powerful, beyond the features I think almost all of the other open source search engines offer. It’s scalability evolves almost daily, as does the pluggability capabilities of it. And for those JRuby folks out there… well, I guess there aren’t (m)any of those on the ferret list, but think about the possibilities… SolrJRuby! Wow. Erik ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2008, 3:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/16 "2008-08-28T15:51:22Z")
On Aug 27, 2008, at 3:28 PM, Marvin H. wrote: > On Aug 27, 2008, at 11:36 AM, Eric S. wrote: > > > Also, I may be missing something obvious here, but I don’t understand > > why there is no ruby API directly to the Lucene Java library, Mainly because Ruby has been too slow to have something pure. Ferret is about as close as it gets to Lucene Java compatibility, and really only diverged from the file format because of wise practical reasons. > > If you want to use Lucene, just go with Solr. +1 Solr is great in Ruby environments to. Really it is. Sure, there’s this JVM beast, and deployment issues, and all that, but they generally aren’t that painful. And the benefits are totally worth it. Erik ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2008, 5:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/17 "2008-08-28T17:22:16Z")
On Aug 28, 2008, at 9:52 AM, Jens K. wrote: > So here’s my very own biased opinion just to complete the picture 🙂 Hey, software should be opinionated! That’s totally fair 🙂 > (shameless plug: [selfhtml.org](http://selfhtml.org) search will be powered by Stellr > [1] ;-). Stellr - great name. Interesting… that’s pretty sweet. > Solr, while being an interesting project without doubt, won’t ever > reach the level of Rails integration that’s possible with > acts\_as\_ferret, simply because it’s server doesn’t run in the > context of the rails app with model classes and all that stuff. What advantage does Ferret have in terms of ActiveRecord integration that Solr wouldn’t have? If you’re talking about custom analyzers being in Ruby, more on that below. > It’s an independent server indexing whatever you throw over the > fence via http+xml. Solr can index CSV as well now a relational database directly (with the new DataImportHandler). It also responds with Ruby hash structure (just add &wt=ruby to the URLs, or use solr-ruby which does that automatically and hides all server communication from you anyway). > How to use a custom analyzer with solr? You have to code it in Java > (or you do your analysis before feeding the data into java land, > which I wouldn’t consider good app design). Most users would not need to write a custom analyzer. Many of the built-in ones are quite configurable. Yes, Solr does require schema configuration via an XML file, but there have been acts\_as\_solr variants (good and bad thing about this git craze) that generate that for you automatically from an AR model. > But even if you do that then you have > a) half a java project (I don’t want that) That’s totally fair, and really the primary compelling reason for a Ferret over Solr for pure Ruby/Rails projects. I dig that. But isn’t Ferret is like 60k lines of C code too?! > and b) no way to use your existing rails classes in that custom > analyzer (I _have_ analyzers using rails models to retrieve synonyms > and narrower terms for thesaurus based query expansion) You could leverage client-side query expansion with Solr… just take the users query, massage it, and send whatever query you like to Solr. Solr also has synonym and stop word capability too. However, there is also no reason (and I have this on my copious-free- time-TOOD-list) that JRuby couldn’t be used behind the scenes of a Solr analyzer/tokenizer/filter or even request handler… and do all the cool Ruby stuff you like right there. Heck, you could even send the Ruby code over to Solr to execute there if you like 😉 > Here’s what I would do _if_ I experienced severe problems with > Ferret in any of my projects: > > Take aaf, replace Ferret with Lucene or even make it modular to > decide at run time which one to use, run the DRb server (or the > whole app, that depends) under JRuby and call it acts\_as\_lucene 🙂 > Et voila - great Rails integration plus Lucene’s maturity. But as > long as Ferret’s working fine for me that’s really unlikely to > happen… Unless somebody wants to sponsor that project, of course 😉 Just using Solr and fixing up acts\_as\_solr to meet your needs (if it doesn’t) would be even easier than all that 🙂 Solr really is a better starting point than Lucene directly, for caching, scalability, replication, faceting, etc. I’d be curious to see scalability comparisons between Ferret and Solr - or perhaps more properly between Stellr and Solr - as it boils down to number of documents, queries per second, and faceting and highlighting speed. I’m betting on Solr myself (by being so into it and basing my professional life on it). ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2008, 4:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/18 "2008-08-28T16:06:37Z")
Hi! On 27.08.2008, at 20:20, Eric S. wrote: > Thanks for all the info, I just found a very good related discussion > from ruby-forum which I thought I’d share > > [http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/137629](http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/137629) well, in this discussion there’s (besides some useful information) some pretty biased statements from several people who obviously must have had a frustrating time with Ferret, or just didn’t get it working right out of the box and decided it was cheaper to make their clients switch search technology (and possibly losing features) than to fix their deployment. I never had somebody from engine yard contact me regarding their massive ferret deployment problems, not sure how hard they really tried to get over them. Imho it’s not very likely that it’s Ferret’s fault that, while all around the world people are running ferret based apps fine, _every_ client of engine yard experiences the same set of problems… So here’s my very own biased opinion just to complete the picture 🙂 I use Ferret in several productive projects with several customers, and also choose it for new projects like the soon-to-be-released new full text search for the german [selfhtml.org](http://selfhtml.org) portal or the search feature at [www.fahrrad-xxl.de](http://www.fahrrad-xxl.de), which tightly integrates aaf with rdig (shameless plug: [selfhtml.org](http://selfhtml.org) search will be powered by Stellr [1] ;-). I have absolutely no problem with Ferret not being very actively maintained, because it works for me just like it is. Honestly, I _never_ had ferret segfault in any one one of my own production apps. (But I admit I saw it segfault in other places, maybe I just don’t do the right things to make it crash…) So why do I stick to Ferret while others declare it a ‘dead’ project? Ferret’s flexibility and feature set plus the level of Rails integration it offers by means of aaf is very unlikely to be reached by any other combination of search engine lib + Rails plugin in the near future. Having that said, I’m really interested how the KinoSearch/Lucy stuff will go on… Solr, while being an interesting project without doubt, won’t ever reach the level of Rails integration that’s possible with acts\_as\_ferret, simply because it’s server doesn’t run in the context of the rails app with model classes and all that stuff. It’s an independent server indexing whatever you throw over the fence via http +xml. That framework independence is a great plus under some circumstances (and my Stellr project scratches exactly that itch in a much more lightweight and undoubtedly less scalable manner), but sometimes it’s also a bad thing. How to use a custom analyzer with solr? You have to code it in Java (or you do your analysis before feeding the data into java land, which I wouldn’t consider good app design). But even if you do that then you have a) half a java project (I don’t want that) and b) no way to use your existing rails classes in that custom analyzer (I _have_ analyzers using rails models to retrieve synonyms and narrower terms for thesaurus based query expansion) Not to speak of Sphinx here, which offers even less integration with your Rails application because it’s tied directly to the database and doesn’t support stuff like real incremental indexing. It’s easy to be several times faster when you leave out most of the features… Of course there are lots of use cases where Sphinx or Solr are perfectly valid choices, because their feature set suits the requirements and/or you’re comfortable with running a servlet container in your production env and spreading your application logic across several languages. Here’s what I would do _if_ I experienced severe problems with Ferret in any of my projects: Take aaf, replace Ferret with Lucene or even make it modular to decide at run time which one to use, run the DRb server (or the whole app, that depends) under JRuby and call it acts\_as\_lucene 🙂 Et voila - great Rails integration plus Lucene’s maturity. But as long as Ferret’s working fine for me that’s really unlikely to happen… Unless somebody wants to sponsor that project, of course 😉 Cheers, Jens [1] [http://rubyforge.org/projects/stellr](http://rubyforge.org/projects/stellr) – Jens Krämer Finkenlust 14, 06449 Aschersleben, Germany VAT Id DE251962952 [http://www.jkraemer.net/](http://www.jkraemer.net/) - Blog [http://www.omdb.org/](http://www.omdb.org/) - The new free film database ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2008, 6:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/19 "2008-08-28T18:25:33Z")
On Aug 28, 2008, at 3:11 AM, John L. wrote: > Is KinoSearch something that could be a Ferret replacement? Yes. The projects are roughly comparable. I’d be happier if Ferret’s ultimate successor was named “Lucy”, though, because then more credit would flow to Dave. > What are the differences between it and Ferret? From a high level, they’re pretty similar. Analyzer, QueryParser, IndexReader, and all that. There are superficial differences in the implementations of individual classes. For instance, Ferret provides several different Tokenizer classes; KinoSearch provides one, based on a regex pattern matching one token. ``` # KinoSearch version of WhiteSpaceTokenizer tokenizer = Tokenizer.new(:pattern => "\\S+") ``` At a low level, things start to diverge. For instance, all metadata in the KinoSearch index file format is encoded as JSON, so it’s human- readable for easy spelunking and debugging. Also, it’s easier to override methods in KinoSearch, so you can do things like implement SearchServer/SearchClient or MockScorer or KSx::Highlight::Summarizer in pure Perl; I believe the mechanism will work similarly with Ruby bindings. > what are the differences between it and the planned Lucy project Personally, I think of them as the same project. KinoSearch is at version 0.x and will soon become version 1.0. Lucy will be version 2 – KinoSearch’s successor. Lucy has never had a high-level API – the work Dave and I did was all on the low-level core. That core has now been fully implemented in the KinoSearch dev branch. What happens between version 1 and 2 depends on how the rollout of version 1 goes. > Do you happen to know if Dave is likely to work on Ferret again > someday? I know he would like to. However, I hope to persuade him to return to his work on Lucy. 🙂 Marvin H. Rectangular Research [http://www.rectangular.com/](http://www.rectangular.com/) ---
**Author:** ![Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/90ced4/32.png) [@Fernando\_Parisotto](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fernando_Parisotto)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2008, 7:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298/20 "2008-08-28T19:31:12Z")
Hi! On 28.08.2008, at 18:24, Marvin H. wrote: […] > There are superficial differences in the implementations of > individual classes. For instance, Ferret provides several different > Tokenizer classes; KinoSearch provides one, based on a regex pattern > matching one token. > > # KinoSearch version of WhiteSpaceTokenizer > > tokenizer = Tokenizer.new(:pattern =\> “\S+”) That’s pretty simple 😉 With Ferret I can use custom tokenizers to inject additional terms at the same offset (i.e., synonyms), is there another way to achieve that with KinoSearch? […] > > Do you happen to know if Dave is likely to work on Ferret again > > someday? > > I know he would like to. However, I hope to persuade him to return > to his work on Lucy. 🙂 whatever, as long as it’s as powerful and easy to use as Ferret and has ruby bindings I’m all for it 🙂 Cheers, Jens – Jens Krämer webit! Gesellschaft für neue Medien mbH Schnorrstraße 76 | 01069 Dresden Telefon +49351467660 | Telefax +493514676666 removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid | [www.webit.de](http://www.webit.de) Amtsgericht Dresden | HRB 15422 GF Sven Haubold [Next page](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/road-map-of-ferret/146298.md?page=2)