SQL Phrase Index (Sphinx) is an open source software search engine designed with indexing database content in mind.
Sphinx is a standalone software package provides fast and relevant full-text search functionality to client applications. It was specially designed to integrate well with SQL databases storing the data, and to be easily accessed by scripting languages.
Applications can access Sphinx search daemon (searchd) using any of the three different access methods: a) via native search API (SphinxAPI), b) via Sphinx own implementation of MySQL network protocol (using a small SQL subset called SphinxQL), or c) via MySQL server with a pluggable storage engine (SphinxSE).
Sphinx powers many popular websites.
Features include:
- Batch and Real-Time full-text indexes.
- Indexing speed of up to 10-15 MB/sec per single core and HDD.
- Sphinx clusters scale up to tens of billions of documents and hundreds of millions search queries per day.
- Searching speed of over 500 queries/sec against 1,000,000-document on a 2-core desktop system with 2 GB of RAM.
- Batch and incremental (soft real-time) full-text indexing.
- Support for non-text attributes (scalars, strings, sets).
- Supports boolean, phrase, word proximity and other types of queries.
- Direct indexing of SQL databases. Native support for MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, plus ODBC connectivity.
- XML documents indexing support.
- Distributed searching support out of the box. Searches can be distributed across multiple machines, enabling horizontal scale-out and HA (High Availability).
- Integration via access APIs.
- SQL-like syntax support via MySQL protocol.
- Full-text searching syntax.
- Database-like result set processing.
- Relevance ranking utilizing additional factors besides standard BM25.
- Sphinx comes with three different APIs, SphinxAPI, SphinxSE, and SphinxQL.
- Text processing support for SBCS and UTF-8 encodings, stopwords, indexing of words known not to appear in the database (“hitless”), stemming, word forms, tokenizing exceptions, and “blended characters” (dual-indexing as both a real character and a word separator).
- Supports UDF.
- Supports stemming (stemmers for English, Russian, Czech and Arabic are built-in; and stemmers for French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, are available by building third party.
Website: sphinxsearch.com
Support: Documentation
Developer: Sphinx Technologies Inc
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
Sphinx is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Return to Search Engines for Big Data
| Popular series | |
|---|---|
 | The largest compilation of the best free and open source software in the universe. Each article is supplied with a legendary ratings chart helping you to make informed decisions. |
 | Hundreds of in-depth reviews offering our unbiased and expert opinion on software. We offer helpful and impartial information. |
 | The Big List of Active Linux Distros is a large compilation of actively developed Linux distributions. |
 | Replace proprietary software with open source alternatives: Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Autodesk, Oracle, Atlassian, Corel, Cisco, Intuit, and SAS. |
 | Awesome Free Linux Games Tools showcases a series of tools that making gaming on Linux a more pleasurable experience. This is a new series. |
 | Machine Learning explores practical applications of machine learning and deep learning from a Linux perspective. We've written reviews of more than 40 self-hosted apps. All are free and open source. |
 | New to Linux? Read our Linux for Starters series. We start right at the basics and teach you everything you need to know to get started with Linux. |
 | Alternatives to popular CLI tools showcases essential tools that are modern replacements for core Linux utilities. |
 | Essential Linux system tools focuses on small, indispensable utilities, useful for system administrators as well as regular users. |
 | Linux utilities to maximise your productivity. Small, indispensable tools, useful for anyone running a Linux machine. |
 | Surveys popular streaming services from a Linux perspective: Amazon Music Unlimited, Myuzi, Spotify, Deezer, Tidal. |
 | Saving Money with Linux looks at how you can reduce your energy bills running Linux. |
 | Home computers became commonplace in the 1980s. Emulate home computers including the Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, ZX81, Amstrad CPC, and ZX Spectrum. |
 | Now and Then examines how promising open source software fared over the years. It can be a bumpy ride. |
 | Linux at Home looks at a range of home activities where Linux can play its part, making the most of our time at home, keeping active and engaged. |
 | Linux Candy reveals the lighter side of Linux. Have some fun and escape from the daily drudgery. |
 | Getting Started with Docker helps you master Docker, a set of platform as a service products that delivers software in packages called containers. |
 | Best Free Android Apps. We showcase free Android apps that are definitely worth downloading. There's a strict eligibility criteria for inclusion in this series. |
 | These best free books accelerate your learning of every programming language. Learn a new language today! |
 | These free tutorials offer the perfect tonic to our free programming books series. |
 | Linux Around The World showcases usergroups that are relevant to Linux enthusiasts. Great ways to meet up with fellow enthusiasts. |
 | Stars and Stripes is an occasional series looking at the impact of Linux in the USA. |