Web / Apache Lucene Interview questions

What is the difference between a TermQuery and a PhraseQuery?

Both operate on exact Terms rather than doing fuzzy or analyzed matching at query time, but they check for very different conditions.

TermQuery	PhraseQuery
Matches documents containing a single exact Term.	Matches documents containing a sequence of Terms in order.
Ignores term position entirely.	Relies on stored term positions to check adjacency.
Example: find docs containing "search".	Example: find docs containing "full text search" as a phrase.

PhraseQuery also supports a configurable "slop" value, allowing a limited number of words to appear between the phrase terms - useful for near-phrase matching without requiring perfectly adjacent terms.

Take quiz

PhraseQuery relies on which stored information that TermQuery ignores? Document boost values

✗ Try again if not.

Term positions within the document

✓ Correct! Well done.

The segment's merge history

✗ Try again if not.

PhraseQuery's "slop" parameter controls: How many segments get merged together

✗ Try again if not.

How many words may appear between the phrase's terms

✓ Correct! Well done.

The RAM buffer flush threshold

✗ Try again if not.

More Related questions...

What is Apache Lucene? What is an inverted index in Lucene? What is a Lucene Document? What are Fields in a Lucene Document? What is an Analyzer in Lucene? What is a Tokenizer in Lucene? What is a TokenFilter in Lucene? What is the purpose of the IndexWriter class? What is the purpose of the IndexSearcher class? What are the different types of Field in Lucene? What is a Lucene Directory? Define a Lucene Segment? Describe the role of the QueryParser in Lucene? List common built-in Analyzers in Lucene? What is a Term in Lucene? What is the difference between StringField and TextField? What is the difference between IndexWriter and IndexWriterConfig? Why do we use Analyzers with different tokenization strategies? How does Lucene score documents (TF-IDF vs BM25)? When should you use StandardAnalyzer vs a custom Analyzer? What is the difference between a TermQuery and a PhraseQuery? How does the inverted index handle updates and deletes? Explain the lifecycle of an IndexWriter commit? What happens when you call IndexWriter.forceMerge()? How do you optimize a Lucene index for search performance? What is the difference between Stored fields and Indexed fields? Why should you use Norms and when can they be disabled? How does Lucene handle segment merging? What is the difference between NRT search and a normal commit? How do you troubleshoot slow queries in Lucene? Explain the difference between BooleanQuery and BooleanClause? What is the difference between Lucene and Elasticsearch or Solr? How does faceting work conceptually in Lucene? Which is better and why: FuzzyQuery vs WildcardQuery for typo tolerance? Explain the execution flow of a search request in Lucene? Explain the internal working of Lucene's BM25Similarity? Explain the internal working of segment merging and merge policies? How do you implement a custom Analyzer chain? Explain the internal working of Lucene's codec architecture? How can you optimize indexing throughput for large-scale data? Explain the lifecycle of an IndexSearcher across an NRT reopen? What is the difference between DocValues and stored fields for sorting or faceting? Explain the internal working of Lucene's point-based fields (BKD tree) for range queries? How do you implement custom scoring using Lucene's Similarity API? Explain the internal working of the SpanQuery family? How does Lucene ensure durability and crash recovery? What is the difference between per-field similarity and global similarity configuration? Explain the internal working of Lucene's MMapDirectory I/O? How do you troubleshoot OOM errors in a Lucene-based application? Explain how Lucene's architecture influences distributed search systems like Solr and Elasticsearch?

Show more question and Answers...

Comments & Discussions

Angular Interview questions 124 ReactJS Interview questions 64 Typescript interview questions 22 NodeJS Interview questions 14 Nativescript interview questions 5 React native Interview questions 51 ES6 Interview questions 7 ES8 Interview questions 3 RxJs Interview questions 17 HTML Interview questions 9 JSP interview questions 6 TanStack Interview Questions 38 Caddy Server Interview questions 50 NGINX Interview questions 50 Traefik Interview questions 50 Apache Lucene Interview questions 50

Recently added questions

Define a Lucene Segment? How does Lucene score documents (TF-IDF vs BM25)? What is a TokenFilter in Lucene? What is a Lucene Directory? What is a Term in Lucene? Why do we use Analyzers with different tokenization strategies? What is a Lucene Document? What is a Tokenizer in Lucene? What is the purpose of the IndexSearcher class? What are the different types of Field in Lucene? Describe the role of the QueryParser in Lucene? List common built-in Analyzers in Lucene? What is the difference between StringField and TextField? What is the difference between IndexWriter and IndexWriterConfig? What is Apache Lucene? What is an inverted index in Lucene? What are Fields in a Lucene Document? What is an Analyzer in Lucene? What is the purpose of the IndexWriter class? When should you use StandardAnalyzer vs a custom Analyzer?

	Interviews Questions Java Spring Hibernate DevOps Testing API BigData Web Erlang AI Database Integration Cloud Python Scala Tools Golang SAP	About Javapedia.net Javapedia.net is for Java and J2EE developers, technologist and college students who prepare of interview. Also this site includes many practical examples. This site is developed using J2EE technologies by Steve Antony, a senior Developer/lead at one of the logistics based company. Follow Javapedia updates
	contact: javatutorials2016[at]gmail[dot]com
Kindly consider donating for maintaining this website. Thanks.
	Copyright © 2026, javapedia.net, all rights reserved. Privacy Policy · Terms of Service.