I've been working with ElasticSearch over the past months as part of the MetaCPAN project. Using ElasticSearch as our back end has worked out really well so far. The reason is that, out of the box, it provides a REST API. So, in our case, we've been able to concentrate on writing code and not on designing an API, defining its behaviour, arguing over URL schemes etc.
To be clear, ES is not written in Perl, but there is a handy Perl module you can use to get yourself up and running in *minutes*. Read More...
As we began working on iCPAN, we became aware of how problematic it can be to figure just exactly what is in the CPAN. More importantly, we became aware of things we really wanted to do when interacting with CPAN. Last month, Dave Rolsky posted some comments on a next generation CPAN search . He has a fairly extensive list of things which a CPAN search could offer and I'm more than inclined to think that he's on the right track. Read More...