Requirements Document
Comprehensive requirements for the Search Service in the KnowledgeTracker Platform.
1. Functional Requirements
1.1 Full-Text Search
- •Search across courses, lessons, assessments, and discussions
- •Fuzzy matching and typo tolerance
- •Stemming and lemmatization for better recall
- •Multi-language search support
- •Phrase search with quoted queries
1.2 Faceted Search & Filtering
- •Filter by category, difficulty level, duration, rating
- •Price range filters (free, paid, discounted)
- •Instructor and organization filters
- •Date range filters (recently added, updated)
- •Facet counts and dynamic filter options
1.3 Auto-Complete & Suggestions
- •Real-time search suggestions as user types
- •Popular search queries and trending topics
- •Did you mean? spell correction suggestions
- •Related search terms and synonyms
1.4 Relevance Ranking
- •TF-IDF and BM25 scoring algorithms
- •Boost factors for title matches, popularity, ratings
- •Personalized ranking based on user history and preferences
- •Recency boost for newly added content
1.5 Advanced Search Features
- •Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT)
- •Field-specific search (title:, instructor:, tag:)
- •Range queries for numeric fields
- •Saved searches and search history
1.6 Search Analytics
- •Track popular search queries and zero-result searches
- •Click-through rate (CTR) for search results
- •Search performance metrics and response times
- •A/B testing for ranking algorithms
2. Non-Functional Requirements
2.1 Performance
- •Search query response time < 100ms
- •Auto-complete suggestions < 50ms
- •Support for 10,000+ concurrent search queries
2.2 Scalability
- •Index millions of documents efficiently
- •Distributed search cluster with sharding
- •Near real-time indexing (documents searchable within 1 second)
2.3 Reliability
- •99.9% search service uptime
- •Automatic index replication and failover
- •Graceful degradation during high load
2.4 Data Freshness
- •Incremental index updates for changed content
- •Automated re-indexing schedules
- •Event-driven indexing for new content
3. Integration Requirements
3.1 Internal Microservices
- •Course Management: Index course content and metadata
- •Discussion Forum: Index forum posts and threads
- •User Management: Personalized search based on user data
- •Analytics: Search behavior tracking
3.2 External Services
- •Search Engine: Elasticsearch, Algolia, Typesense
- •NLP Services: Entity extraction, sentiment analysis
Requirements Validation
Use this requirements document alongside the Database Design to validate:
- ✓Index schema design supports all searchable entities
- ✓Facet fields are properly configured
- ✓Search analytics data collection mechanisms
- ✓Multi-tenant search isolation and security