Chapter 1. Introduction

Table of Contents
Overview
Features
Future Work

Overview

The Zebra server is a high-performance, general-purpose structured text indexing and retrieval engine. It reads structured records in a variety of input formats (eg. email, XML, MARC) and allows access to them through exact boolean search expressions and relevance-ranked free-text queries.

Zebra supports large databases (more than ten gigabytes of data, tens of millions of records). It supports incremental, safe database updates on live systems. You can access data stored in Zebra using a variety of Index Data tools (eg. YAZ and PHP/YAZ) as well as commercial and freeware Z39.50 clients and toolkits.

This document is an introduction to the Zebra system. It will tell you how to compile the software, and how to prepare your first database. It also explains how the server can be configured to give you the functionality that you need.

If you find the software interesting, you should visit the Zebra web site, where you can join the mailing-list by sending email to