We are proud to announce that the technology behind IndexTank has just been released as open-source software under the Apache 2.0 License! We promised to do this when LinkedIn acquired IndexTank, so here we go:

indextank-engine: Indexing engine

indextank-service: API, BackOffice, Storefront, and Nebulizer

We know that many of our users and other interested parties have been patiently waiting for this release. We want to thank you for your patience, for your kind emails, and for your continued support. We are looking forward to seeing IndexTank thrive as an open-source project. Of course we’ll do our part; our team is hard at work building search infrastructure at LinkedIn. We are part of a larger team that has built and released search technologies such as Zoie, Bobo, and just this past Monday, Cleo. We are excited to add IndexTank to this array of powerful open source tools.

What's IndexTank?

What, you had never heard of IndexTank until now? Well, here’s a short explanation. IndexTank is mainly three things:

IndexEngine : a real-time fulltext search-and-indexing system designed to separate relevance signals from document text. This is because the life cycle of these signals is different from the text itself, especially in the context of user-generated social inputs (shares, likes, +1, RTs).

: a real-time fulltext search-and-indexing system designed to separate relevance signals from document text. This is because the life cycle of these signals is different from the text itself, especially in the context of user-generated social inputs (shares, likes, +1, RTs). API : a RESTful interface that handles authentication, validation, and communication with the IndexEngine(s). It allows users of IndexTank to access the service from different technology platforms (Java, Python, .NET, Ruby and PHP clients are already developed) via HTTP.

: a RESTful interface that handles authentication, validation, and communication with the IndexEngine(s). It allows users of IndexTank to access the service from different technology platforms (Java, Python, .NET, Ruby and PHP clients are already developed) via HTTP. Nebulizer: a multitenant framework to host and manage an unlimited number of indexes running over a layer of Infrastructure-as-a-Service. This component of IndexTank will instantiate new virtual instances as needed, move indexes as they need more resources, and try to be reasonably efficient about it.

Most of you won’t need the third part. Reddit, for example, runs on IndexEngine and API only. If you are a cloud provider and intend to offer IndexTank as a service, then you'll want both.

Try it out!

Head over to GitHub and give the IndexTank Engine and IndexTank Service code a try. We are available if you have any questions: come join the IndexTank group on Linkedin.

Thanks again and happy holidays!

The IndexTank dev team