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Using ElasticSearch as a fast, flexible, and scalable solution to search occurrence records and checklists
Building: Grand Hotel Mediterraneo
Room: Africa (formerly America del Sud)
Date: 2013-10-30 05:00 PM – 05:15 PM
Last modified: 2013-10-08
Abstract
GBIF France and Canadensys use ElasticSearch http://www.elasticsearch.org, an open-source distributed search solution, to index occurrence records and checklists, respectively. It capably handles GBIF France's 16 millions records in a dynamic portal http://www.gbif.fr/portal/ and accommodates search on the scientific names, vernacular names in multiple languages, and their relationships on Canadensys' Database of Vascular Plants of Canada (VASCAN), http://data.canadensys.net/vascan. Here we introduce ElasticSearch, highlight its capabilities, describe its setup and configuration, illustrate how data are imported, provide examples of faceted searching, autocomplete, geospatial querying and give pointers to relevant plugins. We will demonstrate the use of code libraries that interface directly with ElasticSearch, its built-in application programming interface (API) and discuss when it is more appropriate to use either technique. We finish with advice on how to avoid common pitfalls and a roadmap for our future development using ElasticSearch.