I'm pleased to announce the first public release of Lux (version 0.9.1),
an XML search engine embedding Saxon 9 and Lucene/Solr 4. Lux offers
many features found in XML databases: persistent XML storage,
index-optimized querying, an interactive query window, and some
application support features - it is possible to build applications
written exclusively in XQuery and XSLT using Lux. I call it a search
engine, though, to indicate this is not a replacement for a
full-featured database. I hope existing Solr/Lucene users dealing with
XML documents will find Lux adds a unique and compelling query capability.
Lux grew out of the need to provide an XML-aware query capability for
documents stored in and indexed by Solr/Lucene; it is currently in use
at my workplace, both as an ad hoc query tool for developers and as part
of our content ingestion process. We believe that others may find it
useful as well, and are providing it under an open source license in the
hope that wider exposure will lead to a longer, healthier life.
Lux is built on a production quality code base. It has been rigorously
tested, and all known critical defects have been resolved. However, it
is in a fairly early stage of development (it's about a year old). This
means there are features users will miss. Some of them we already know
about (see the Plans page on the web site or the issue tracker), but the
relatively narrow distribution so far means there are certainly more to
be found. I encourage you to report these on the mailing list (see
below): this is a unique opportunity to influence the direction Lux
takes in the future.
Lots more information, including downloads and setup instructions, is
available at http://luxdb.org, source code is at
http://github.com/msokolov/lux, issues are tracked at
http://issues.luxdb.org/, and please let us know what you think using
the (brand new) mailing list at lu...@luxdb.org, archived at
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/luxdb. (Please note
the mailing list is hosted as a google group, which makes it a bit
tricky to sign up with a non-gmail address, but you can. To do that,
just tack your email address on to this link:
http://groups.google.com/group/luxdb/boxsubscribe?email=)
-Mike Sokolov
PS: apologies for cross-posting; there is some overlap among the
readership of these groups, I know -- but they are not identical, and
we'll keep any followup to a single list -- or on the luxdb list.
- [ANN] Lux XML search engine Michael Sokolov
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