LIRE

LIRE is a Lucene-based image indexing and searching project.

Terracotta can help with scalability in a few ways:

1. If we can break individual searches into smaller tasks that can run in parallel, then we can distribute individual searches across multiple machines to decrease latency. Depending on how the search is implemented, this may or may not be easy
2. Using a distributed Lucene index, we can balance multiple searches across a cluster of machines. That way, you can add search servers as the number of concurrent searches increases.
3. Using a distributed Lucene index, we can also separate the load of indexing from the load of searching by using a separate machine to do the indexing.

Here's the original email thread