Lucene in Action, Second Edition

Appendix B. Lucene index format

In this book we’ve treated the Lucene index more or less as a black box and have concerned ourselves only with its logical view. Although you don’t need to understand index structure details in order to use Lucene, you may be curious about the “magic.” Lucene’s index structure is a case study in itself of highly efficient data structures to maximize performance and minimize resource usage. You may see it as a purely technical achievement, or you can view it as a masterful work of art. There’s something innately beautiful about representing rich structure in the most efficient manner possible. (Consider the information represented by fractal formulas or DNA as nature’s proof.)

In this appendix, we’ll first review ...