Version
You can check the version of Elasticsearch you are using by running the following command in the terminal:
curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200'
The response should include a "version" field with the version number of Elasticsearch.
About Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch is a component of the Elastic Stack, a set of tools oriented for data storage, analysis, visualization,
etc.
Elastic Stack, and therefore Elasticsearch supports all kinds of data, including strings, geospatial data, numbers,
all with structured, semistructured, or structureless configurations. Elasticsearch is the component that does the
data retrieval
for the whole stack. It is a NoSQL data query system, mostly written in Java, and it accepts mostly JSON queries.
Elasticsearch was released in 2010, and as it was stated before, it is one crucial part of a whole set of tools that
helps
enterprises and individuals handle increasing amounts of data.
Elasticsearch has applications in many fields. Business analytics professionals benefit greatly from having huge
sample sets
at the tip of their fingers to draw complicated regressions that can help explain what happened before, and what
might happen
in the future with the extremely complex unit that is a business. Geospatial mapping is one of the strong suits of
Elasticsearch,
having applications in dashboarding and regular mapping. Extracting Key Performance Indicators, as well as figuring
out new ones,
is something that Elasticsearch does very well for businesses, again due to the speed and efficiency with which the
entire stack works.
This system and software has particular features, for example, Logstash, its native pipeline to feed and extract
data from the main database,
is run entirely on the server side. This means that while the local client sends the instructions for what needs to
be processed,
the server handles the filtering, organizing, and cleaning of the data before reporting it back to the client or
adding it back to the database.
Kibana is a very significant part of Elasticsearch and the entire Elastic Stack, and it has good applications when
combined with Elasticsearch,
mainly for data visualizations. Kibana can automatically generate dashboards, graphs, and many other crucial tools
that might be of great use for business owners. All of these features, Kibana achieves with data warehoused and
searched by with Elasticsearch.
Releases
Elasticsearch first versions are of course no longer supported or given any maintenance. The original 0.4.0 version
first released
in 2010 has evolved to become the current release, 5.4, which was made available to the public in May of 2017.
There are no rumors of big new versions, which would mark almost 4 years without a full release.
Nevertheless, the version is still supported and bugfixed, meaning that it is perfectly usable for anyone.