From DIY Search to Elasticsearch: Knowing When to Make the Shift

Join us for a Austin Elastic User Group meetup on Thursday, April 16th for a meetup! We'll feature two talks, followed by pizza, refreshments, and connecting with the Austin Elastic community. ⚡️ Interested in giving a talk? ⚡️Are you interested presenting on your Elastic use case? We welcome 5-10 minute lightning talks, 45-minute deep dives, and everything in between. If you're interested, please send an email to meetups@elastic.co Date and Time:Thursday, April 16th, from 5:30-8:00 pm CDT Location:Elastic Austin Office: 8th Floor823 Congress AveAustin, TX 78701 Parking:Parking options nearby include several garages or street parking in nearby blocks. Check out SpotHero to reserve a parking spot in advance! Arrival Instructions:When you arrive at the office, head to the 8th floor. The main entrance to the building is on 9th Street, between Congress Ave and Brazos St. Agenda: 5:30 pm: Doors open6:00 pm: When Your Search Outgrows Your Platform - Rebecca Burch (Software Engineer II atTexas A&M Transportation Institute)6:30 pm: Talk # 2 - Details coming soon!7:15-8:00 pm: Networking Talk Abstracts:When Your Search Outgrows Your Platform - Rebecca Burch (Software Engineer II atTexas A&M Transportation Institute)This talk traces the real infrastructure patterns that emerge when native search stops working: custom indexing layers, incremental sync pipelines, relevance tuning, and reconciliation logic. Drawn from building a production search system serving 700+ employees, we'll walk through the warning signs that you're accidentally rebuilding a search engine inside your application layer, and how Elasticsearch provides purpose-built solutions for each of these patterns. Expect a side-by-side look at what it takes to roll your own vs. reaching for the right tool intentionally.