Requirements | Features | Setup | https://github.com/SemanticMediaWiki/SemanticMediaWiki/blob/master/src/Elastic/docs/usage.md "Usage" | https://github.com/SemanticMediaWiki/SemanticMediaWiki/blob/master/src/Elastic/docs/config.md "Settings" | https://github.com/SemanticMediaWiki/SemanticMediaWiki/blob/master/src/Elastic/docs/technical.md "Technical notes" | https://github.com/SemanticMediaWiki/SemanticMediaWiki/blob/master/src/Elastic/docs/faq.md "FAQ"

The ElasticStore provides a framework to replicate Semantic MediaWiki related data to an Elasticsearch cluster and enable its QueryEngine to send #ask requests and retrieve information from Elasticsearch (aka ES) instead of the default SQLStore.

The objective is to provide an interface to Elasticsearch to:

• improve structured (and allow unstructured) content searches
• extend and improve full-text query support (including sorting of results by relevancy)
• provide means for a scalability strategy by relying on the ES infrastructure

Requirements

• Elasticsearch: Recommended 6.1+, Tested with 5.6.6
• Semantic MediaWiki: 3.0+
• elasticsearch/elasticsearch (PHP ^7.0 ~6.0 or PHP ^5.6.6 ~5.3)

The ElasticStore relies on the elasticsearch php-api to communicate with Elasticsearch directly and is therefore independent of any other vendor or MediaWiki extension that may use Elasticsearch as search backend (e.g. CirrusSearch).

It is recommended to:

• Use Elasticsearch 6+ due to improvements to its sparse field handling
• Consult the official hardware guide on specific Elasticsearch requirements

Features

The ElasticStore provides the same query features (given those are tested) as the SQLStore making its functionality equivalent to the SQLStore but provides better support for free text matches or for unstructured text (if enabled) when retrieved from an article or file. Furthermore, improved performance and scalability is expected especially when the document count becomes significant larger than 50000 articles or a lot of fulltext queries are executed.

• Active replication monitoring to inform user about the replication state of a document
• Handling of active property type changes without the need to rebuild the entire index itself after it is ensured that all ChangePropagation jobs have been processed
• Support of inverse queries such as [[-Foo::Bar]]
• Support of property chain and path queries (e.g. [[Foo.Bar::Foobar]])
• Support of category and property hierarchies

Setup

Before the ElasticStore (hereby Elasticsearch) can be used as drop-in replacement for the existing SQLStore based QueryEngine the following settings and operations are required:

• Set `$GLOBALS['smwgDefaultStore'] = 'SMWElasticStore';(see [$smwgDefaultStore][smw:smwgDefaultStore])
• Set$GLOBALS['smwgElasticsearchEndpoints'] = [ ... ];(see [$smwgElasticsearchEndpoints][smw:smwgElasticsearchEndpoints])
• Runphp setupStore.php<tt>orphp update.php<tt>
• Rebuild the index usingphp rebuildElasticIndex.php<tt>(see [rebuildElasticIndex.php`]smw:rebuildElasticIndex.php)

A more detailed introduction can be found as part of the https://github.com/SemanticMediaWiki/SemanticMediaWiki/blob/master/src/Elastic/docs/usage.md "usage" and https://github.com/SemanticMediaWiki/SemanticMediaWiki/blob/master/src/Elastic/docs/config.md "settings" section.

General notes

Elasticsearch is not expected to be used as data store replacement which means a RDMBS backend (MySQL, SQLite, or Postgres) is still required.

The ElasticStore provides a customized serialization format to transform and transfer the required data to Elasticsearch. The QueryEngine provides a #ask-ES DSL interpreter (see domain language) which ensures that any existing #ask query can be answered by the Elasticsearch cluster without changing its syntax when switching from a SQLStore (given that index process has been completed).