Difference between Search Core and Search Lucene API

Hi.

I am the author of the Search Lucene API module. The major difference is that Lucene is an extremely advanced search engine library that offers much more functionality than core search. Below are some of the features that Search Lucene API has which core search does not:

• Wildcard searching - ap* will match application, apple, and ape.
• Fuzzy searching, based on Levenstein distance - test~ will match tent, Dropal~ will match Drupal.
• Proximity searches - "Drupal php"~5 will match Drupal and php within 5 words of each other.
• Term boosting - Drupal^4 php will match documents with Drupal or php, but will make documents with Drupal more relevant in the search results.
• Support for all of the following boolean operators: AND, OR, AND NOT
• Term Grouping - (framework OR library) AND php syntax is allowed.

Search Lucene API also has build in caching to improve search performance, and it is not SQL based which tends to be slow for textual searches. In addition, it is Drush aware and has a built-in Facet API to allow developers to easily create facets. Facets can also be managed via the administrative interface. Search Lucene API also exposes more hooks than the core search so you can interact with the search process without having to rewrite code.

Hope this helps,
Chris