Mastering ElasticSearch

Extend your knowledge on ElasticSearch, and querying and data handling, along with its internal workings

Overview

• Learn about Apache Lucene and ElasticSearch design and architecture to fully understand how this great search engine works
• Design, configure, and distribute your index, coupled with a deep understanding of the workings behind it
• Learn about the advanced features in an easy to read book with detailed examples that will help you understand and use the sophisticated features of ElasticSearch

In Detail

ElasticSearch is fast, distributed, scalable, and written in the Java search engine that leverages Apache Lucene capabilities providing a new level of control over how you index and search even the largest set of data.

“Mastering ElasticSearch” covers the intermediate and advanced functionalities of ElasticSearch and will let you understand not only how ElasticSearch works, but will also guide you through its internals such as caches, Apache Lucene library, monitoring capabilities, and the Java API. In addition to that you’ll see the practical usage of ElasticSearch configuration parameters, monitoring API, and easy-to-use and extend examples on how to extend ElasticSearch by writing your own plugins.

“Mastering ElasticSearch” starts by showing you how Apache Lucene works and what the ElasticSearch architecture looks like. It covers advanced querying capabilities, index configuration control, index distribution, ElasticSearch administration and troubleshooting. Finally you’ll see how to improve the user’s search experience, use the provided Java API and develop your own custom plugins.

It will help you learn how Apache Lucene works both in terms of querying and indexing. You’ll also learn how to use different scoring models, rescoring documents using other queries, alter how the index is written by using custom postings and what segments merging is, and how to configure it to your needs. You’ll optimize your queries by modifying them to use filters and you’ll see why it is important. The book describes in details how to use the shard allocation mechanism present in ElasticSearch such as forced awareness.

If you are looking for a book that will allow you to easily extend your basic knowledge about ElasticSearch or you want to go deeper into the world of full text search using ElasticSearch then this book is for you.

What you will learn from this book

• Understand how Apache Lucene works
• Use and configure different scoring models to alter default scoring mechanism
• Exploit query rescore to recalculate the score of top N documents
• Choose the right amount of shards and replicas for your deployment
• Use shards allocation wisely and understand its internals
• Alter the index format by using different postings format
• Use your knowledge to create scalable, efficient, and fault tolerant clusters
• Monitor your cluster by using and understanding the ElasticSearch API
• Learn to control segments merging and why ElasticSearch uses merging at all
• Overcome problems with garbage collection, threading, and I/O
• Improve the user search experience by using ElasticSearch functionality
• Develop an application using the ElasticSearch Java API and develop custom ElasticSearch plugins

Approach

A practical tutorial that covers the difficult design, implementation, and management of search solutions.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction to ElasticSearch
Chapter 2: Power User Query DSL
Chapter 3: Low-level Index Control
Chapter 4: Index Distribution Architecture
Chapter 5: ElasticSearch Administration
Chapter 6: Fighting with Fire
Chapter 7: Improving User Search Experience
Chapter 8: ElasticSearch Java API
Chapter 9: Developing ElasticSearch Plugins