[DOCS] Add overview page to analysis topic (#50515)

Adds a 'text analysis overview' page to the analysis topic docs.

The goals of this page are:

* Concisely summarize the analysis process while avoiding in-depth concepts, tutorials, or API examples
* Explain why analysis is important, largely through highlighting problems with full-text searches missing analysis
* Highlight how analysis can be used to improve search results
This commit is contained in:
James Rodewig 2020-01-08 12:53:08 -06:00
parent 90e66a7b97
commit 9d1567b13b
2 changed files with 83 additions and 3 deletions

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[[analysis]]
= Analysis
= Text analysis
[partintro]
--
_Analysis_ is the process of converting text, like the body of any email, into
_tokens_ or _terms_ which are added to the inverted index for searching.
_Text analysis_ is the process of converting text, like the body of any email,
into _tokens_ or _terms_ which are added to the inverted index for searching.
Analysis is performed by an <<analysis-analyzers,_analyzer_>> which can be
either a built-in analyzer or a <<analysis-custom-analyzer,`custom`>> analyzer
defined per index.
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--
include::analysis/overview.asciidoc[]
include::analysis/anatomy.asciidoc[]
include::analysis/testing.asciidoc[]

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== Text analysis overview
++++
<titleabbrev>Overview</titleabbrev>
++++
Text analysis enables {es} to perform full-text search, where the search returns
all _relevant_ results rather than just exact matches.
If you search for `Quick fox jumps`, you probably want the document that
contains `A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog`, and you might also want
documents that contain related words like `fast fox` or `foxes leap`.
[discrete]
[[tokenization]]
=== Tokenization
Analysis makes full-text search possible through _tokenization_: breaking a text
down into smaller chunks, called _tokens_. In most cases, these tokens are
individual words.
If you index the phrase `the quick brown fox jumps` as a single string and the
user searches for `quick fox`, it isn't considered a match. However, if you
tokenize the phrase and index each word separately, the terms in the query
string can be looked up individually. This means they can be matched by searches
for `quick fox`, `fox brown`, or other variations.
[discrete]
[[normalization]]
=== Normalization
Tokenization enables matching on individual terms, but each token is still
matched literally. This means:
* A search for `Quick` would not match `quick`, even though you likely want
either term to match the other
* Although `fox` and `foxes` share the same root word, a search for `foxes`
would not match `fox` or vice versa.
* A search for `jumps` would not match `leaps`. While they don't share a root
word, they are synonyms and have a similar meaning.
To solve these problems, text analysis can _normalize_ these tokens into a
standard format. This allows you to match tokens that are not exactly the same
as the search terms, but similar enough to still be relevant. For example:
* `Quick` can be lowercased: `quick`.
* `foxes` can be _stemmed_, or reduced to its root word: `fox`.
* `jump` and `leap` are synonyms and can be indexed as a single word: `jump`.
To ensure search terms match these words as intended, you can apply the same
tokenization and normalization rules to the query string. For example, a search
for `Foxes leap` can be normalized to a search for `fox jump`.
[discrete]
[[analysis-customization]]
=== Customize text analysis
Text analysis is performed by an <<analyzer-anatomy,_analyzer_>>, a set of rules
that govern the entire process.
{es} includes a default analyzer, called the
<<analysis-standard-analyzer,standard analyzer>>, which works well for most use
cases right out of the box.
If you want to tailor your search experience, you can choose a different
<<analysis-analyzers,built-in analyzer>> or even
<<analysis-custom-analyzer,configure a custom one>>. A custom analyzer gives you
control over each step of the analysis process, including:
* Changes to the text _before_ tokenization
* How text is converted to tokens
* Normalization changes made to tokens before indexing or search