We often get asked for a comparision between the features provided by the Basic Search (based on Apache Lucene), the Enterprise Search (based on Exalead), and the Google Search Appliance. So we created the following table to get a quick overview about the main differences between these technologies.
Search features
| Basic Search
| Enterprise Search
| Google Search Appliance
|
|---|
| Full-text search | x | x | x |
| Fielded searching | x | x | x |
| Date-range searching | x | x | x |
| Wildcard queries | x | x | x |
| Boolean operators | x | x | x |
| Excluding terms | x | x | x |
| Approximate matching | x | x | ? |
| Phonetic matching | - | x | x |
| Spelling suggestions | - | x | x |
| Thesaurus integration | - | x | x |
| Search in results | - | x | x |
| Multi-axial guided navigation | - | x | x |
Index features
| Basic Search
| Enterprise Search
| Google Search Appliance |
|---|
| Multi-language | x | x | x |
| Duplicate content detection | - | x | x |
| Advanced language processing (spelling, phonetic matching, approximate matching and automatic lemmatization) | - | x | x |
| Index update by website crawling | x | x | x |
| Index update by push mechanism | - | x | x |
| Incremental index update by FirstSpirit | - | x | x |
| Create specific ranking rules | - | x | x |
| Create custom categories / facets | - | x | x |
| Named entity recognition | - | x | x |
| Out-of-the-box support for more than 300 document types | - | x | x |
Provided connectors
| Basic Search
| Enterprise Search
| Google Search Appliance
|
|---|
| Connector for website crawling | x | x | x |
| Connector for databases | x | x | x |
| Connector for filesystem crawling (with ACLs) | - | x | x |
| Connector for LDAP/AD | - | x | x |
| Connector for Lotus Notes | - | x | x |
| Connector for Microsoft Sharepoint | - | - | x |
| Connector for OpenText Livelink | - | - | x |
| Connector for IBM FileNet | - | - | x |
| Connector for EMC Documentum | - | - | x |
| Connector for Salesforce | - | - | x |
| Connector for MS Exchange | - | x | third party |
| Connector for Atlassian Confluence | - | - | third party |
| Push Connector | - | x | x |
Secure Searches
| Basic Search
| Enterprise Search
| Google Search Appliance
|
|---|
| Support of FirstSpirit Personalisation module | x | x | x |
| Authentification via LDAP | - | x | x |
| Authentification via NTLM | - | x | x |
| Authentification via Kerberos | - | - | x |
| Authentification via Cookie Session | - | - | x |
| Authentification via HTTP Basic Auth | - | x | x |
| Authentification via SAML | - | - | x |
| Autorization based on ACL (early binding) | - | - | x |
| Autorization based on Content Soruce (late binding) | - | - | x |
| Autorization based on SAML (late binding) | - | - | x |
| Frontend features | Basic Search | Enterprise Search | Google Search Appliance |
| AdWords, Keymatch, Recommandations | - | - | x |
| Autocomplete | - | x | x |
| Sort by date | - | x | x |
| Sort by relevance | - | x | x |
| Sort by metatag | - | x | x |
| People and Expert search | - | - | x |
| Document preview | - | x | x |
| Query suggestions | - | x | x |
| Related queries | - | - | x |
| Federation Interface to integrate search results of other systems into a single search result | - | - | x |
| Translation of search results | - | - | x |
| Standard web service support for indexing and searching | - | x | x |
| Administration | Basic Search | Enterprise Search | Google Search Appliance |
| Graphical webinterface for administration | - | x | x |
| Localized (multi-language) administration | - | - | x |
| Search reports | - | x | x |
| Crawling reports | - | - | x |
| Built-in cluster and fail-over mechanism | - | x | x |
| Support | Basic Search | Enterprise Search | Google Search Appliance |
| Appliance (Hard- and Softwarecombination) optimized for search | - | - | x |
| Free hardware replacement on failure | - | - | x |
| 24/7 Support included in licence | - | - | x |
