Hibernate Search or Compass

Question

I can't seem to find any recent talk on the choice. Back in '06 there was criticism on Hibernate Search as being incomplete and not being ready to compete with Compass, is it now? Has anyone used both and have some perspective on making the decision.

I am developing a web app in Java in my free time, its just me so I'm looking to cut corners everywhere possible while minimizing the effect on the end product. Having said that the searching capabilities of my project are priority one! I have spent a good deal of time making the database model to back the system. The ability to get the user what they're looking for is what will set my app apart. So, speed is expendable ...obviously to a reasonable degree.

Here are my current thoughts on the technologies for this app, and if you see any glaring newb mistakes be gentle ...I'm an expert at nothing.

DB: PostgreSQL
Platform: Java
Frameworks: Spring, Hibernate, Seam

Obviously, I've chosen all free (as in beer) technologies and ones that as far as I can tell play nice together. So what do you guys think, Compass or Hibernate Search to round things out?

-Nomad311

Answer 1

<Careful. Biased person here: I am the project lead of Hibernate Search and author of Hibernate Search in Action by Manning>

If you are targeting Hibernate as your persistence provider, I think you are better off using Hibernate Search as the integration is very smooth (configuration, entity discovery down the the same APIs and programamtic model). If you want to index a lot of "stuffs" that are not in your database, then Compass is a better fit.

We are working on Hibernate Search 3.2 at the moment: our road map is here