===== Overview =====
[[http://www.sphinxsearch.com|Sphinx Search]], an open source tool for indexing and searching data.  Works well with MySQL.

===== Case Studies =====
  * Used by Craigslist and [[http://sphinxsearch.com/powered.html|many other sites]].

===== Gotchas =====
  * Be sure to use the debug version (./configure --with-debug) when you first start evaluating it.  What might turn into silent corruption in the production version is likely to crash in debug.  
  * It uses crc32 values instead of storing the actual words in its index.  Once you get over a few hundred thousand words, collisions become likely.  That can lead to time wasted debugging weird query results where you get back apparently unrelated matches.

===== Tips & Tricks =====
  * Supports distributed indexes for horizontal partitioning

===== Alternatives =====
  * MySQL full text search

===== Other Resources ==== 
  * [[http://sphinxsearch.com/forum/forum.html?id=1|Sphinx Forum]]