Anyone managing modern systems knows the pain: when something breaks, you're drowning in logs but starving for answers. Traditional log management tools either make you wait forever for results or cost a fortune to scale. GreptimeDB's enhanced full-text indexing capabilities are changing this landscape dramatically.

The Log Search Dilemma

Log data presents unique challenges:

• Massive volume (often terabytes per day)
• Mostly unstructured text
• Need for both precise matching and fuzzy searching
• Mix of high and low-selectivity queries

When your application errors spike at 3AM, you need answers in seconds, not minutes. Yet many teams still rely on crude grep commands or overpriced log platforms that break the bank.

GreptimeDB's Dual-Engine Approach

With v0.14, GreptimeDB introduced a game-changing dual-backend approach to full-text indexing, giving users flexibility based on their specific search patterns:

1. Bloom Backend: Balanced Performance with Low Overhead

The new Bloom-based backend provides:

• Minimal storage overhead - typically just 10% of raw data size
• Consistent performance across query patterns
• Optimal for general-purpose log search where you need good results for various query types This makes it perfect for everyday operational log searching where cost efficiency matters.

2. Tantivy Backend: Lightning-Fast Selective Queries

When you need blazing speed for highly selective queries:

• 5x faster performance for needle-in-haystack searches
• Perfect for trace IDs and other unique identifiers
• Advanced text analysis capabilities like stemming and tokenization

This backend shines when you're hunting for specific error signatures or correlation IDs.

3. New Matching Capabilities

The matches_term function and @@ operator greatly simplify exact term matching:

-- Find all logs containing "connection timeout"
SELECT * FROM logs WHERE message @@ 'connection timeout';

This precise matching capability delivers dramatically better performance than traditional LIKE queries (up to 50x faster for selective terms).

Real-World Impact

These improvements translate to tangible benefits:

• Lower storage costs - choose the right backend for your budget constraints
• Faster incident resolution - find relevant logs in milliseconds instead of minutes
• Better developer experience - intuitive SQL syntax that feels natural

Start Searching Smarter

Ready to transform your log management experience? GreptimeDB's flexible full-text search capabilities are available now in the latest release. Whether you're managing a small application or enterprise-scale systems, you can finally get answers from your logs at the speed your team deserves.

Check out the official documentation to learn more about configuring full-text indexing for your specific needs.

---

About Greptime

GreptimeDB is an open-source, cloud-native database purpose-built for real-time observability. Built in Rust and optimized for cloud-native environments, it provides unified storage and processing for metrics, logs, and traces—delivering sub-second insights from edge to cloud —at any scale.

• GreptimeDB OSS – The open-sourced database for small to medium-scale observability and IoT use cases, ideal for personal projects or dev/test environments.

• GreptimeDB Enterprise – A robust observability database with enhanced security, high availability, and enterprise-grade support.

• GreptimeCloud – A fully managed, serverless DBaaS with elastic scaling and zero operational overhead. Built for teams that need speed, flexibility, and ease of use out of the box.

🚀 We’re open to contributors—get started with issues labeled good first issue and connect with our community.

⭐ GitHub | 🌐 Website | 📚 Docs

💬 Slack | 🐦 Twitter | 💼 LinkedIn