Inverted index

A map from each word to the documents that contain it. It is what lets a search engine find all documents containing several words in milliseconds.

Where it shows up in real systems

  • Search engine

    Documents become searchable after the next refresh, so search is eventually consistent with your primary database. Queries are CPU-heavy; add nodes and replicas for throughput, and keep the source of truth elsewhere.

    In production: Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Apache Solr, Algolia, Meilisearch

See it break, then fix it

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