Search Tools Product Report

Zebra

Product Information

Platform: Unix, Windows (Win32)
Price: free, open source, GNU GPL (commercial support available)

• Indexes both free text and fielded information.
• Indexes local files, no robot for remote spidering.
• Input filters for recognizing structured text in SGML, XML, MARC and other ASCII text formats.
• Free text and Boolean queries, regular expressions and right truncation.
• Approximate matching (for spelling mistakes).
• Responds to Z39.50 distributed search clients.

Articles & Reviews

• Comparing Open Source Indexers Infomotions Musings; May 29, 2001 by Eric Lease Morgan (updated November 19, 2004)
  Describes the history and features of eight open-source search engines, freeWAIS-sf (aging code and hard to install, but good for searching email and public domain etexts); Harvest (powerful gathering features for frequently-changing data stores, good with structured documents); ht://Dig (tricky to configure, no phrase searching, automatic stemming and match word highlighting); Isearch (weak documentation and support, easy to install, dated interface, Z39.50 support); MPS Information Server (zippy indexing of both text and structured data, Z39.50 support, Perl API, limited documentation); SWISH-E (simple to install engine, CGIs in Perl and PHP still beta, good for HTML pages, recognizes new META tags, sorts results by field; WebGlimpse (easy to install and configure, requires commercial version for customized output); Yaz/Zebra (mainly Z39.50, no Perl API, mainly a toolkit to index and respond to distributed client queries). Article also points out that chaotic information is less than helpful and encourages organization, structure and vocabulary control.



• How Zebra Earned Its Stripes Open Magazine: September 26, 2003, by Nancy Cohen
  Article explains the history and mission of Zebra, which provides its free open-source software to libraries. Focuses on Zebra's open-source business model, with sidebar information on the Z39.50 protocol.
  

Date Modified: 2005-03-31