This document provides a summary of the Solr search platform in under 5 minutes. It describes how Solr is based on Lucene and exposes its search capabilities via REST. It outlines Solr's basic configuration files and mechanisms for indexing, searching, faceting, spellchecking, highlighting and APIs. It also briefly discusses Solr's security, scaling, and resources for learning more.

1. Solr in 5... minutes
DOSUG Ignite Night
February 2, 2010
Mike Brevoort
Avalon Consulting LLC

2. It was religion...
that brought me to Solr

3. •Created by Yonik Seeley for CNET
•Contributed to Apache Jan 2006
•Version 1.4 released Nov 2009

4. Lucene = engine
Lucene is a high-
performance text
search engine
library

5. Solr = Serverlization of
Lucene++
•Exposed over HTTP,
REST-like interface
•Java Web Application

6. Basic Config
•schema.xml •solrconfig.xml
•field types and •Lucene index
fields parameters
•*dynamic fields •request handler
mappings
•cache settings
•plugins

7. Indexing Data - HTTP Post
•Commit/Rollback
•Global modification state

8. Data Import Handler
•Index data
from database
or HTTP GET
•Full and
incremental
indexing

9. Index Binary
Documents
•ExtractingRequestHandler a.k.a.
“Solr Cell”
•MS Office, PDF, RTF, OpenDocument,
Images, MP3, Zip, etc.
curl 'http://localhost:8983/solr/update/extract?literal.id=doc1&commit=true' -F
"myfile=@resume.pdf"

10. Searching
•http://localhost:8983/solr/select?
q=query
•&start=50
•&rows=25
•&fq=filter+query
•&facet=on&facet.field=category
•&sort=dist(2, point1, point2) desc
*coming in Solr 1.5

11. Results
•default format
is XML
•&wt=json
•&wt=php
•&wt=ruby
•&wt=python
*wt = writer type

12. Query Parser
•&deftype=lucene (default)
• q=title:saint* AND zipcode:[80000 TO 81999]
• advanced syntax
•&deftype=dismax
• q=ipod +shuffle -touch
• simplified syntax
• ideal for processing query string from user

13. Facets (guided navigation)
&facet=on
&facet.field=listingTraditions

14. Spell Checking
Highlighting
More Like This
q=saint&mlt=true&mlt.fl=title_t
for each result,
returns similar results
based on &mlt.fl

15. SolrJs
•JQuery
Widgets
Framework
•Solr
Powered UI

16. APIs
•HTTP GET/POST
•JSON
•SolrJ (java)
•ruby, python, PHP, C#
•Integrations: Drupal, Rails, Grails
(workin’ on it), etc.

17. Security
•(listen for crickets)
•Relies on server and container
security
•TOTALLY OPEN BY DEFAULT - it’s
up to you to secure it
•No standard document level security
model

18. Scaling: master/
slave
•Index +
configuration
replication
•Load balanced
queries
•Supported
OOTB

19. Scaling: sharding
•Massive
Indexes
•Relevancy per
index and
merged
•Some features
not supported

20. Resources
Resources
• http://lucene.apache.org/solr/
• solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Mike Brevoort |
brevoortm@avalonconsult.com
twitter: @mbrevoort