Oracle Text vs Lucene

[sohguanh]

A check using Google turn up anecdotes of companies that switched over to Lucene as Oracle Text just isn't giving the performance required based on the cost needed. That is, the ROI is not great.

I would like to ask those who have used both Oracle Text and Lucene and which is better in terms of performance and cost ($$$) ?

I would think cost-wise Lucene is Open Source beat Oracle Text down. The cost for Lucene would be more on developer cost as it require coding in Java + Lucene. Still I believe this will be cheaper than Oracle Text.

Oracle Text offer easier implementation as we no need to change our SQL queries we just ask DBA to install Oracle Text and create those indexes and we are ready to go.

Anyone got any comments ?

[andrewdavid]

Some differences between Lucene and Oracle text
1. Lucene index is faster in building while Oracle Text is faster in updating index.
2. Oracle Text performance is not an issue in our environment while Lucene is dependent on environment.
3. Lucene is at application level while Oracle Text is at database level.

These are some major differences but the choice is depend on the requirements.

Comprehensive benchmark is not easy, but it is certainly doable to test a couple of typical or most frequent operations using both Oracle Text and Lucene.

Scalability is not an issue as long as enough budget can be secured.