I am writing a website which indexes large amounts of data into databases (each with about 800 tables per database), and the website allows you to search the database for various items. Should I use something like lucene or just write my own search algorithm? I am using PHP and MySQL. Although I can filter my SELECT queries, and create a searching algorithm I just wanted to know if I should use Lucene because I am just indexing stuff in a database. Also please do suggest anything that might help me. Forgot to mention that even though I have 800 tables they would be pretty small in size.
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Lucene is a mature, tested, open source library.
I would definetly say: try to use it as much as possible, it will probably be better and consume less time then implementing your own library.
If there is a certain functionality that lucene does not provide – you can always create your own variation of lucene to take care of it.
Do not underestimate the importance of the community in using products such lucene: Help is almost always available in lucene’s forums [and SO], and the library is constantly tested and maintained because of the large number of users!