How does a Lucene Query actually work?

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06/12/2017 - 12:20 to 13:00
Palais Atelier
long talk (40 min)
Intermediate

Session abstract: 

When you submit a query to Elasticsearch or Apache Solr, underneath all the shiny user interfaces it's a Lucene Query that's doing all the grunt work.  But what actually happens when your query is processed?  And how come it's so damn fast?

This talk will guide you through the code paths that Lucene takes when executing a query, explaining the data structures and algorithms used, from simple term queries to more complex booleans and custom scoring methods.  It will be useful for people writing their own queries or similarities, wanting to optimize how their queries are run, or just plain curious about how an awesome piece of software actually works.

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