database - What is faceted search?

Question

What exactly is faceted search in the context of full-text search?

I even read about it from Wikipedia, but I couldn't completely understand the use/benefit of it. Hope the community can answer/expand and explain with some good examples.

NOTE: We're into the process of evaluating/researching different open source full-text search engine and mostly I'm seeing faceted search listed as one of the feature among others. So I'm trying to assess whether this would be helpful for our application requirement.

Answer 1

Faceted search is well-explained here and Lucene faceted through an example.

EXAMPLE: