Requirements of a Distributed Search System's Design

Define the search contract and estimate the workload it creates. Keep query-serving capacity separate from the volume of documents being indexed.

Requirements

We will define the functional and non-functional requirements for a distributed search system.

Functional requirements

• Search: Return ranked content matching the query and its filters. Define searchable fields, supported languages, result pagination, and access restrictions. Also specify how additions, edits, and deletions reach the index; otherwise search freshness is undefined.

Non-functional requirements