1. State of the art

This chapter covers
The need for search in modern applications Full-text search concepts Full-text search solutions

Search is a quite vague notion involving machine processes, human processes, human thoughts, and even human feelings. As vague as it is, search is also a mandatory functionality in today’s applications, especially since we’re exposed to and have access to much more information than we used to. Since the exposure rate doesn’t seem to slow down these days, searching efficiently, or should we say finding efficiently, becomes a discriminatory element among applications, systems, and even humans. It’s no wonder your customers or your users are all about searching.