Aderant Handshake vs. Apache Lucene

The user of Handshake takes a certain amount of user computer literacy and the user needs to be resourceful. When building our site, I needed to google quite a bit. On the contrary, if budget allows, Handshake developers will do it all for you.

Incentivized

Apache Lucene is a perfect text search implementation where the heap space usage needs to be kept to its minimal. It also enables search based on various search fields and most importantly the search and index process can happen simultaneously. The only scenario where it might be less appropriate would be when the index size grows too big. We have witnessed few scalable issues where the search would take a while when the index size is too large.

Incentivized

• The main reason we got Handshake was to display visual gadgets for our accounting systems. We always provided spreadsheet type reports, but pictures and more engaging. Attorney gets a dashboard in real time of where they stand financially.
• Additional use as FAQ's in different departments in the firm, that is, accounting, IT, and office services.
• Knowledgebase - How to's and software.

Incentivized

• We found Apache Lucene to be extremely performant in querying large amounts of data and retrieving the correct files based on the metadata provided.
• The online community offers great support for the product. Even though it is an open source tool, it is not difficult to find help online for it.
• When we were creating a proof of concept application, we found that the software worked just as well, while being run locally on a resource-limited PC.

Incentivized

• Documentation is weak, but hopefully, since Aderant just acquired the company, that will improve

Incentivized

• User interface for setup and maintenance would be helpful.
• Easier cloud/cluster setup.
• Better, centralized documentation.

Incentivized

None. Always need about Handshake's interface with Aderant, way before Aderant purchased them. Seemed like a natural fit.

Incentivized

The search and index performance of [Apache] Lucene is excellent and the quality of results is good, if not better. For implementing it with small scale applications it is a no brainer, Lucene is the best and most cost effective solution. Learning curve is not too steep either.

Incentivized

• Hard to say, but ultimately putting knowledge in the hands of fee earners immediately it is positive.

Incentivized

• Being an open source project we did not have to pay any licensing fees for using Apache Lucene. It has greatly improved our search functionality in our web apps.

Incentivized