Elasticsearch: how does it work, and why should you use it?

This meetup will feature two excellent speakers from OpenSource Connections (http://opensourceconnections.com): Doug Turnbull @softwaredoug (http://twitter.com/softwaredoug) and Daniel Beach @danielbeach. (http://twitter.com/danielbeach) Doug is a Search Relevancy Expert who works on client Solr and Elasticsearch problems and creates tools that help people get better search results, such as Splainer (http://splainer.io) and Quepid (http://quepid.com). Daniel is a senior designer and developer who loves using data to solve problems, and is currently developing a course on Elasticsearch.

Part One: Why Search? Starring Elasticsearch

What does a search engine add to our infrastructure? How does it differ from existing databases? In this talk we explore search as a data structure. Why is it useful? What is an inverted index and how does that make search blazingly fast? We’ll cover the basics of search through exploring Elasticsearch and discovering the underlying capabilities together.

Part Two: Client-side Apps and Elasticsearch's Syntax

In this talk we will explore the benefits of using client-side applications for search and dive into Elasticsearch's well-structured search syntax. Learn the fundamentals of using the Elasticsearch query DSL, including: basic search types, filters (blazing fast query functions), and compound queries. Discover the power of Elasticsearch.

As always, booze and grub will be provided!