The SphinxSearch plugin enhances the search feature in Movable Type by adding extensive support for full-text indices. It integrates the Sphinx server with Movable Type to provide full-text searches across various objects in Movable Type.
Sphinx is a full-text search engine, distributed under GPL version 2. Generally, it's a standalone search engine, meant to provide fast, size-efficient and relevant full-text search functions to other applications.
Currently built-in data source drivers support fetching data either via direct connection to MySQL, or from a pipe in a custom XML format.
The native Sphinx search API is available for PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby, Java amongst other programming languages. As the Movable Type core is primarily written in Perl, the plugin uses the Perl API via the corresponding CPAN module to communicate with the Sphinx search service.