Apache Solr – Open Source Enterprise Search Platform (discussion about why/what/where solr?)

           In continuation of the last post(https://smarttechies.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/apache-solr-open-source-enterprise-search-platform/), Apache Solr is an open source enterprise search platform based on Apache Lucene. Here, I am providing answers to the common queries which will arise when we start to learn any new software.

The first question is

Why Solr?

• Apache Solr is an open source. We can have a look at the source code to customize.
• It performs better full-text search than the relational database search.
• It can support other languages other than English.

What is Solr?

• A full-text search engine.
• A specialized type of schema-less database management system.
• Customizable, open source software.

What features Solr has?

• Full-text search
• Highlighting
• Faceted search
• Relevant results
• Database integration
• Distributed indexing
• Replication
• Spell Check
• Support for synonyms, Etc …..

From the above discussion, we have a glimpse of the Apache Solr. Now, we will see where and how Solr fits in our application from the below diagram.

              The use case, which we are going to discuss from the above diagram is, the online application has a search module, where, end user enters keywords to search. In this case, if you search against the database, we cannot get all the features mentioned above. That is why the search will be served from the Apache Solr. Here, the data from the database will be indexed into the Solr. All the search traffic will be directed to the Solr server.

In the next session, we will discuss the Apache Solr installation and configuration.

Stay tuned…..

About Siva Prasad Rao Janapati

Siva Janapati is an Architect with experience in building Cloud Native Microservices architectures, Reactive Systems, Large scale distributed systems, and Serverless Systems. Siva has hands-on in architecture, design, and implementation of scalable systems using Cloud, Java, Go lang, Apache Kafka, Apache Solr, Spring, Spring Boot, Lightbend reactive tech stack, APIGEE edge & on-premise and other open-source, proprietary technologies. Expertise working with and building RESTful, GraphQL APIs. He has successfully delivered multiple applications in retail, telco, and financial services domains. He manages the GitHub(https://github.com/2013techsmarts) where he put the source code of his work related to his blog posts.