Utilizing Lucene as a Search Engine for Document Retrieval

In an era dominated by vast volumes of textual data, efficient information retrieval has become a critical challenge. This project presents a desktop-based document retrieval system built using Apache Lucene, an open-source search library renowned for its powerful indexing and search capabilities. The system is designed to index a static corpus of Wikipedia articles and support fast, accurate, and feature-rich search functionalities. It enables users to perform a variety of queries—including term, phrase, wildcard, prefix, and Boolean searches—with results ranked by relevance. The graphical user interface, implemented using Java Swing, provides an intuitive and interactive platform for exploring search results. By focusing on Lucene’s core capabilities, this project demonstrates how a scalable and extensible search engine can be constructed with minimal overhead, making it ideal for local information retrieval tasks.