Search Index

Noun · Development

Definitions

  1. A precomputed data structure — typically an inverted index mapping terms to the documents containing them — that enables fast full-text or structured queries without scanning every record, as used by systems like Elasticsearch, Solr, and PostgreSQL's GIN indexes.

    In plain English: A lookup table built in advance so that searching millions of records can happen almost instantly instead of checking every single one.

    Example: "Rebuilding the search index after the migration took three hours, but queries dropped from 800ms to 12ms."

Related Terms