Manticore Search vs Opensearch

Explore the comprehensive full-text search engine comparison: Manticore Search vs OpenSearch. Discover performance, features, and scalability to determine the ideal solution for your project’s search requirements.

Overview

Selecting the right search engine is vital for project success. Compare Manticore Search and OpenSearch, two powerful search engines, to find the perfect match for your high-performance, scalable search needs.

By examining key features, we can better understand how Manticore Search and OpenSearch compare in various use cases and requirements. Let’s delve into the specifics of each engine to help you make an informed decision for your search implementation.

Manticore Search Logo

What is Manticore Search

Manticore Search is an open-source, high-performance search engine designed for full-text search and real-time data indexing. Known for its speed, efficiency, and scalability, it excels in handling large datasets and offers scalability, making it a great choice for applications requiring rapid search responses. With a focus on simplicity, it provides flexible features like advanced filtering, ranking, and querying capabilities, while also being highly customizable.

Opensearch Logo

What is Opensearch

OpenSearch is an open-source search engine and analytics suite, originally forked from Elasticsearch. Built to remain under the permissive Apache 2.0 license, it focuses on maintaining a fully open-source approach. OpenSearch offers distributed search and analytics, real-time indexing, and is highly scalable. It includes tools like OpenSearch Dashboards and OpenSearch Ingestion for visualizing and ingesting data, making it ideal for log analytics, observability, and search applications. With a community-driven governance model, OpenSearch allows users to retain flexibility without vendor lock-in.

Key Features

Manticore Search and OpenSearch are two powerful full-text search engines that offer robust solutions for document indexing and searching. Each engine brings its unique strengths to the table, providing developers with tools to create fast and efficient search experiences. Let’s explore the key features of both engines to help you determine which one best fits your project requirements.

FeatureManticore SearchOpensearch
Open source
Full-text search
Autocomplete (predictive typing suggestions)
Fuzzy search (handling typos)
Vector Search (semantic and similarity-based searching)
Boolean full-text search (AND, OR, NOT query support)
Faceting (organize and narrow search results)
Grouping (combine related search results)
Geospatial search (location-based search capabilities)
JOINs (combine data from different sources)
Synonyms (support for alternate search terms)
Percolate search (match queries to incoming data)
Real-time indexing (immediate document updates)⚠️ (not by default)
Secondary indexes (support multiple indexes for faster queries)
Row-wise storage (row-oriented data storage)
Columnar storage (column-oriented data storage)
Docstore (store original values)
Cost-based query optimizer (choose the best query plan based on data)
In-place updates (update documents without re-indexing)
Nested object/JSON field (support complex JSON structures)
Auto-schema (automatic schema generation for data)
SQL support (query using SQL syntax)⚠️ (very limited)
JSON support (query using JSON syntax)
Bulk inserts (insert large amounts of data efficiently)
Distributed search (search across multiple nodes)
High availability (data mirroring and load balancing)
Replication (copy data across different nodes for redundancy)
Auto-sharding (automatic data partitioning across nodes)⚠️ coming soon🔗
Authentication (built-in user authentication features)

Both Manticore Search and OpenSearch offer powerful features for search and analytics. Manticore Search excels in SQL support, real-time indexing, and columnar storage, which can be advantageous for certain use cases. OpenSearch, on the other hand, offers a community-driven ecosystem, anomaly detection, and a fully open-source stack with compatibility for Elasticsearch plugins and APIs up to version 7.10. The best choice depends on your specific project requirements, existing technology stack, and scalability needs.

API Client Libraries (SDKs)

When it comes to integration with your programming language, both Manticore Search and OpenSearch offer a range of SDKs and tools to help you build powerful search applications. Let’s compare the official SDKs available for both engines.

Programming languageManticore SearchOpensearch
PHP PHP
JavaScript JavaScript
TypeScript TypeScript
Python Python
Ruby Ruby
Go Go
Rust Rust
Java Java
Elixir Elixir
C++ C++
C# C#

Both Manticore Search and Elasticsearch offer a wide range of language support. Elasticsearch has a slight edge in terms of official client libraries, but Manticore Search provides strong integration options as well. Choose the language that best suits your project’s requirements and integrate your preferred search engine seamlessly into your application.

External Integrations

Explore the external integrations and ecosystem compatibility of Manticore Search and OpenSearch, two versatile full-text search engines. This comparison highlights how these solutions interface with various databases, programming languages, and third-party tools, enabling seamless integration into diverse technology stacks and enhancing your search implementation capabilities.

Integration nameManticore SearchOpensearch
MySQL client support
MySQLdump support
Elasticdump support
Apache Superset integration
Grafana integration
Fluentbit integration
Logstash integration
Filebeat integration
Vector.dev integration
Kibana integration⚠️ coming soon🔗
Kafka integration⚠️ coming soon🔗

Both Manticore Search and OpenSearch offer extensive integration options, allowing them to work harmoniously with a wide range of external services and technologies. OpenSearch has a particularly strong community-driven ecosystem, with tools like OpenSearch Dashboards for data visualization and OpenSearch Ingestion for log and metric collection. Manticore Search offers strong SQL support and compatibility with MySQL-based systems, making it an efficient solution for projects that rely on traditional relational databases.

Use Cases

Manticore Search and OpenSearch are powerful search engines with distinct strengths and capabilities. Understanding their features helps in choosing the right engine for specific use cases. Both engines offer robust full-text search capabilities, but they excel in different areas.

  • E-commerce Search: Both Manticore Search and OpenSearch are strong contenders for e-commerce applications, offering features like faceted search and efficient real-time indexing. Manticore Search stands out with its SQL support, allowing for seamless integration with existing relational databases and enabling developers to use familiar SQL queries. This can significantly reduce development time and complexity. While OpenSearch provides relevance tuning and personalization features, Manticore’s performance optimizations often result in faster search responses, enhancing the user experience in high-traffic online stores.
  • Log Management: OpenSearch is widely recognized for log analysis and monitoring, especially when used within the OpenSearch observability stack (Dashboards, Ingestion). However, Manticore Search offers efficient log searching capabilities, particularly with its columnar storage optimized for analytical queries. This can lead to faster query times and reduced storage requirements. While visualization tools may need to be integrated separately, Manticore’s lightweight footprint and high performance can result in cost savings and simplified infrastructure compared to more resource-intensive stacks.
  • Content Management Systems: In the realm of CMS, full-text search and faceting are essential features. Manticore Search’s native SQL support makes it an excellent choice for CMS platforms that rely on relational databases, enabling a more straightforward integration process. Developers can leverage existing SQL knowledge, reducing the learning curve and speeding up deployment. While OpenSearch offers a rich ecosystem with various plugins, Manticore provides a more streamlined solution that can be easier to maintain and scale, especially for teams already familiar with SQL.
  • Real-time Analytics: Both engines support real-time indexing and analytics, but Manticore Search’s columnar storage and SQL capabilities provide a significant advantage for analytical workloads. This combination allows for high-performance query execution and flexibility in data analysis. While OpenSearch offers extensive aggregation functions and integrates well with visualization tools, Manticore’s focus on performance ensures quicker insights, which is crucial in environments where real-time data analysis impacts decision-making.
  • Vector Search: Manticore Search and OpenSearch both offer vector search functionalities for similarity-based searches in high-dimensional spaces. Manticore’s implementation is optimized for speed and efficiency, making it particularly suitable for applications like semantic search, recommendation systems, and image similarity detection. The ease of integrating vector search with SQL queries in Manticore can simplify development and enhance performance.
  • Multilingual Search: Supporting multiple languages is vital for global applications. While OpenSearch provides a variety of language analyzers out of the box, Manticore Search excels in efficient processing of complex languages, including East Asian and Slavic languages. Its design focuses on handling diverse linguistic requirements effectively, resulting in more accurate search results and better user satisfaction in multilingual environments.
  • High-Performance Web Search: Both engines are capable of powering high-performance web search applications. **Manticore Search’s emphasis on speed and resource efficiency makes it particularly well-suited for scenarios where performance is critical, such as news portals or real-time data platforms. Its SQL support enables easy integration with existing systems, reducing development overhead. While OpenSearch’s distributed architecture is beneficial for massive scale, Manticore offers a more efficient solution for projects that require high performance without the complexity of managing large clusters.
  • Geospatial Applications: Geospatial search capabilities are supported by both Manticore Search and OpenSearch, making them suitable for location-based services. Manticore’s optimized search algorithms can handle geospatial queries with high efficiency, providing faster response times for applications like ride-sharing services, delivery tracking, or location-based advertising. This performance advantage can enhance user experience by delivering timely and relevant location data.

Manticore Search offers strong SQL support, efficient real-time indexing, and columnar storage, which can be advantageous in certain scenarios. OpenSearch provides a rich open-source ecosystem, with advanced observability tools and extensive machine learning capabilities. The choice between them depends on the specific requirements of your project, including scalability needs, existing technology stack, and the complexity of search operations.

Conclusion

Both Manticore Search and OpenSearch are robust search solutions with their own strengths:

  • Manticore Search offers strong SQL support and efficient real-time indexing
  • OpenSearch provides a rich open-source ecosystem and community-driven development
  • Both engines support vector search and geospatial functionalities
  • Manticore Search’s columnar storage can be advantageous for certain analytical workloads
  • OpenSearch is widely adopted for log analysis and large-scale search applications
  • The choice depends on specific project requirements, existing technology stack, and scalability needs

Your choice depends on your project’s requirements, technology stack, and scalability needs.

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