Defining text search services

Use IBM® Content Search Services or Elasticsearch or OpenSearch services to configure full-text searches for objects.

Note:

IBM Content Search Services is deprecated from IBM Content Cortex V5.7.0. It is recommended that you plan to migrate to another search service such as Elasticsearch or OpenSearch.

Indexing modes

A Content Platform Engine domain can support both the IBM Content Search Services feature and the Elasticsearch feature. However, a domain can support only one Elasticsearch content-based search cluster.

Diagram showing a P8 domain with CSS Servers and Elasticsearch cluster

The diagram illustrates how Content Search Services servers and the Elasticsearch cluster coexist as separate components within the domain infrastructure, with each object store configured independently for its indexing mode.

Each object store in a domain can be configured to use one of the following indexing modes:

Content Search Services only: The object store uses only Content Search Services for indexing and search. This mode is the traditional configuration.
Elasticsearch only: The object store uses only Elasticsearch for indexing and search. This mode is the recommended configuration for new deployments.
Dual-mode indexing: The object store indexes content to both Content Search Services and Elasticsearch simultaneously. This mode is designed for migration scenarios to validate Elasticsearch functionality without disrupting Content Search Services search capabilities. After migration is complete, transition to Elasticsearch-only mode.

Indexing architecture

Content Search Services uses a text search subsystem dispatcher to optimize indexing performance. Elasticsearch uses the Elasticsearch Indexing Queue Sweep to optimize indexing performance.

Diagram showing the indexing pipeline for CSS and Elasticsearch

The diagram shows how indexing requests flow through each architecture: the text search subsystem dispatcher distributes workload across multiple Content Search Services servers, while the Elasticsearch Indexing Queue Sweep manages requests to the Elasticsearch cluster.

Getting started

The topics in this section provide detailed information and procedures for configuring text search services in your Content Platform Engine domain.

For new deployments, Elasticsearch or OpenSearch is the recommended search service. If you have an existing deployment with Content Search Services, you can migrate to Elasticsearch using dual-mode indexing, which allows both search services to operate simultaneously during the transition period.