A content-addressable and -searchable storage system for managing and exploring massive amounts of feature-rich data such as images, audio or scientific data, is shown. A segmentation and feature extraction unit segments data corresponding to an object into a plurality of data segments and -generates a feature vector for each data segment. A sketch construction component converts the feature vector into a compact bit-vector corresponding to the object. The system also has a similarity index having plurality of compact bit-vectors corresponding to a plurality of objects and an index insertion component for inserting a compact bit-vector corresponding to an object into the similarity index. The system may further have an indexing unit for identifying a candidate set of objects from said similarity index based upon a compact bit-vector corresponding to a query object. Still further, the system may additionally have a similarity ranking component for ranking objects in said candidate set by estimating their distances to the query object.