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Posted to solr-user@lucene.apache.org by JohnRodey <ti...@yahoo.com> on 2013/02/12 16:40:55 UTC

Benefits of Solr over Lucene?

I know that Solr web-enables a Lucene index, but I'm trying to figure out
what other things Solr offers over Lucene.  On the Solr features list it
says "Solr uses the Lucene search library and extends it!", but what exactly
are the extensions from the list and what did Lucene give you?  Also if I
have an index built through Solr is there a non-HTTP way to search that
index?  Because solr4j essentially just makes HTTP requests correct?

Some features Im particularly interested in are:
Geospatial Search
Highlighting
Dynamic Fields
Near Real-Time Indexing
Multiple Search Indices 

Thanks!



--
View this message in context: http://lucene.472066.n3.nabble.com/Benefits-of-Solr-over-Lucene-tp4039964.html
Sent from the Solr - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Re: Benefits of Solr over Lucene?

Posted by Walter Underwood <wu...@wunderwood.org>.
This is apples and pomegranates. Lucene is a library, Solr is a server. In features, they are more alike than different.

wunder

On Feb 12, 2013, at 7:40 AM, JohnRodey wrote:

> I know that Solr web-enables a Lucene index, but I'm trying to figure out
> what other things Solr offers over Lucene.  On the Solr features list it
> says "Solr uses the Lucene search library and extends it!", but what exactly
> are the extensions from the list and what did Lucene give you?  Also if I
> have an index built through Solr is there a non-HTTP way to search that
> index?  Because solr4j essentially just makes HTTP requests correct?
> 
> Some features Im particularly interested in are:
> Geospatial Search
> Highlighting
> Dynamic Fields
> Near Real-Time Indexing
> Multiple Search Indices 
> 
> Thanks!




Re: Benefits of Solr over Lucene?

Posted by Travis Low <tl...@4centurion.com>.
http://lucene.apache.org/solr/

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 10:40 AM, JohnRodey <ti...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I know that Solr web-enables a Lucene index, but I'm trying to figure out
> what other things Solr offers over Lucene.  On the Solr features list it
> says "Solr uses the Lucene search library and extends it!", but what
> exactly
> are the extensions from the list and what did Lucene give you?  Also if I
> have an index built through Solr is there a non-HTTP way to search that
> index?  Because solr4j essentially just makes HTTP requests correct?
>
> Some features Im particularly interested in are:
> Geospatial Search
> Highlighting
> Dynamic Fields
> Near Real-Time Indexing
> Multiple Search Indices
>
> Thanks!
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://lucene.472066.n3.nabble.com/Benefits-of-Solr-over-Lucene-tp4039964.html
> Sent from the Solr - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>



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**

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** <tl...@4centurion.com>* *

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Re: Benefits of Solr over Lucene?

Posted by Lance Norskog <go...@gmail.com>.
Lucene and Solr have an aggressive upgrade schedule.From 3 to 4 got a 
major rewiring,
and parts are orders of magnitude faster and smaller.
If you code using Lucene, you will never upgrade to newer versions.
(I supported Solr&Lucene customers for 3 years, and nobody ever did.)

Cheers,
Lance

> I know that Solr web-enables a Lucene index, but I'm trying to figure out
> what other things Solr offers over Lucene.  On the Solr features list it
> says "Solr uses the Lucene search library and extends it!", but what exactly
> are the extensions from the list and what did Lucene give you?  Also if I
> have an index built through Solr is there a non-HTTP way to search that
> index?  Because solr4j essentially just makes HTTP requests correct?
>
> Some features Im particularly interested in are:
> Geospatial Search
> Highlighting
> Dynamic Fields
> Near Real-Time Indexing
> Multiple Search Indices
>
> Thanks!
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://lucene.472066.n3.nabble.com/Benefits-of-Solr-over-Lucene-tp4039964.html
> Sent from the Solr - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


Re: Benefits of Solr over Lucene?

Posted by Glen Newton <gl...@gmail.com>.
And helping people - who don't know much about them - how to decide
which to use is not useful?

-Glen

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 3:34 PM, Walter Underwood <wu...@wunderwood.org> wrote:
> It is like deciding between a disk drive and a file server. Solr and Lucene are different kinds of things.
>
> wunder
>
> On Feb 12, 2013, at 12:26 PM, Glen Newton wrote:
>
>> Is there a page on the wiki that points out the use cases (or the
>> features) that are best suited for Lucene adoption, and those best
>> suited for SOLR adoption?
>>
>> -Glen
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 3:11 PM, Shawn Heisey <so...@elyograg.org> wrote:
>>> On 2/12/2013 11:19 AM, JohnRodey wrote:
>>>>
>>>> So I have had a fair amount of experience using Solr.  However on a
>>>> separate
>>>> project we are considering just using Lucene directly, which I have never
>>>> done.  I am trying to avoid finding out late that Lucene doesn't offer
>>>> what
>>>> we need and being like "aw snap, it doesn't support geospatial"  (or
>>>> highlighting, or dynamic fields, or etc...).  I am more curious about core
>>>> index and search features, and not as much with sharding, cloud features,
>>>> different client languages and so on.
>>>
>>>
>>> Because Solr is written using the Lucene API, if you want to use Lucene, you
>>> can do anything Solr can, plus plenty of things that Solr can't -- but for
>>> many of those, you'd have to write the code yourself.  That's the key
>>> difference -- with Solr, a HUGE amount of coding is already done for you,
>>> you just have to put a few easy-to-debug client API calls in your code.
>>>
>>> From my perspective as a user with some Java coding ability but not any true
>>> experience with large-scale development:  If your development team is ready
>>> and capable of writing Lucene code, then it would be better to use Solr
>>> instead, and if there's something you need that Solr can't do, put your
>>> development team to work writing the required plugin.  They would likely
>>> spend far less time doing that than writing an entire search system using
>>> Lucene.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Shawn
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> -
>> http://zzzoot.blogspot.com/
>> -
>
> --
> Walter Underwood
> wunder@wunderwood.org
>
>
>



--
-
http://zzzoot.blogspot.com/
-

Re: Benefits of Solr over Lucene?

Posted by Walter Underwood <wu...@wunderwood.org>.
It is like deciding between a disk drive and a file server. Solr and Lucene are different kinds of things.

wunder

On Feb 12, 2013, at 12:26 PM, Glen Newton wrote:

> Is there a page on the wiki that points out the use cases (or the
> features) that are best suited for Lucene adoption, and those best
> suited for SOLR adoption?
> 
> -Glen
> 
> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 3:11 PM, Shawn Heisey <so...@elyograg.org> wrote:
>> On 2/12/2013 11:19 AM, JohnRodey wrote:
>>> 
>>> So I have had a fair amount of experience using Solr.  However on a
>>> separate
>>> project we are considering just using Lucene directly, which I have never
>>> done.  I am trying to avoid finding out late that Lucene doesn't offer
>>> what
>>> we need and being like "aw snap, it doesn't support geospatial"  (or
>>> highlighting, or dynamic fields, or etc...).  I am more curious about core
>>> index and search features, and not as much with sharding, cloud features,
>>> different client languages and so on.
>> 
>> 
>> Because Solr is written using the Lucene API, if you want to use Lucene, you
>> can do anything Solr can, plus plenty of things that Solr can't -- but for
>> many of those, you'd have to write the code yourself.  That's the key
>> difference -- with Solr, a HUGE amount of coding is already done for you,
>> you just have to put a few easy-to-debug client API calls in your code.
>> 
>> From my perspective as a user with some Java coding ability but not any true
>> experience with large-scale development:  If your development team is ready
>> and capable of writing Lucene code, then it would be better to use Solr
>> instead, and if there's something you need that Solr can't do, put your
>> development team to work writing the required plugin.  They would likely
>> spend far less time doing that than writing an entire search system using
>> Lucene.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Shawn
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> -
> http://zzzoot.blogspot.com/
> -

--
Walter Underwood
wunder@wunderwood.org




Re: Benefits of Solr over Lucene?

Posted by Upayavira <uv...@odoko.co.uk>.
Do you want to embed an index into your application, e.g. as a desktop
app? Use Lucene. Is search basically the whole of your app? Perhaps use
Lucene. 

Do you want you offer search as a service? Do you want to be able to
arbitrarily scale your index (beyond the number of documents a single
index can handle, or beyond the load a single server can handle), do you
want to offer search services to a number of other servers? Then use
Solr.

Once you get that Lucene is a library you embed into your java app, and
Solr is a server that you connect to from other server(s), you will
hopefully be able to work out which is more appropriate.

If you consider using Lucene in the latter scenario, you will probably
end up rewriting a lot of what Solr does anyway.

Upayavira

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013, at 08:26 PM, Glen Newton wrote:
> Is there a page on the wiki that points out the use cases (or the
> features) that are best suited for Lucene adoption, and those best
> suited for SOLR adoption?
> 
> -Glen
> 
> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 3:11 PM, Shawn Heisey <so...@elyograg.org> wrote:
> > On 2/12/2013 11:19 AM, JohnRodey wrote:
> >>
> >> So I have had a fair amount of experience using Solr.  However on a
> >> separate
> >> project we are considering just using Lucene directly, which I have never
> >> done.  I am trying to avoid finding out late that Lucene doesn't offer
> >> what
> >> we need and being like "aw snap, it doesn't support geospatial"  (or
> >> highlighting, or dynamic fields, or etc...).  I am more curious about core
> >> index and search features, and not as much with sharding, cloud features,
> >> different client languages and so on.
> >
> >
> > Because Solr is written using the Lucene API, if you want to use Lucene, you
> > can do anything Solr can, plus plenty of things that Solr can't -- but for
> > many of those, you'd have to write the code yourself.  That's the key
> > difference -- with Solr, a HUGE amount of coding is already done for you,
> > you just have to put a few easy-to-debug client API calls in your code.
> >
> > From my perspective as a user with some Java coding ability but not any true
> > experience with large-scale development:  If your development team is ready
> > and capable of writing Lucene code, then it would be better to use Solr
> > instead, and if there's something you need that Solr can't do, put your
> > development team to work writing the required plugin.  They would likely
> > spend far less time doing that than writing an entire search system using
> > Lucene.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Shawn
> >
> 
> 
> 
> --
> -
> http://zzzoot.blogspot.com/
> -

Re: Benefits of Solr over Lucene?

Posted by Glen Newton <gl...@gmail.com>.
Is there a page on the wiki that points out the use cases (or the
features) that are best suited for Lucene adoption, and those best
suited for SOLR adoption?

-Glen

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 3:11 PM, Shawn Heisey <so...@elyograg.org> wrote:
> On 2/12/2013 11:19 AM, JohnRodey wrote:
>>
>> So I have had a fair amount of experience using Solr.  However on a
>> separate
>> project we are considering just using Lucene directly, which I have never
>> done.  I am trying to avoid finding out late that Lucene doesn't offer
>> what
>> we need and being like "aw snap, it doesn't support geospatial"  (or
>> highlighting, or dynamic fields, or etc...).  I am more curious about core
>> index and search features, and not as much with sharding, cloud features,
>> different client languages and so on.
>
>
> Because Solr is written using the Lucene API, if you want to use Lucene, you
> can do anything Solr can, plus plenty of things that Solr can't -- but for
> many of those, you'd have to write the code yourself.  That's the key
> difference -- with Solr, a HUGE amount of coding is already done for you,
> you just have to put a few easy-to-debug client API calls in your code.
>
> From my perspective as a user with some Java coding ability but not any true
> experience with large-scale development:  If your development team is ready
> and capable of writing Lucene code, then it would be better to use Solr
> instead, and if there's something you need that Solr can't do, put your
> development team to work writing the required plugin.  They would likely
> spend far less time doing that than writing an entire search system using
> Lucene.
>
> Thanks,
> Shawn
>



--
-
http://zzzoot.blogspot.com/
-

Re: Benefits of Solr over Lucene?

Posted by Shawn Heisey <so...@elyograg.org>.
On 2/12/2013 11:19 AM, JohnRodey wrote:
> So I have had a fair amount of experience using Solr.  However on a separate
> project we are considering just using Lucene directly, which I have never
> done.  I am trying to avoid finding out late that Lucene doesn't offer what
> we need and being like "aw snap, it doesn't support geospatial"  (or
> highlighting, or dynamic fields, or etc...).  I am more curious about core
> index and search features, and not as much with sharding, cloud features,
> different client languages and so on.

Because Solr is written using the Lucene API, if you want to use Lucene, 
you can do anything Solr can, plus plenty of things that Solr can't -- 
but for many of those, you'd have to write the code yourself.  That's 
the key difference -- with Solr, a HUGE amount of coding is already done 
for you, you just have to put a few easy-to-debug client API calls in 
your code.

 From my perspective as a user with some Java coding ability but not any 
true experience with large-scale development:  If your development team 
is ready and capable of writing Lucene code, then it would be better to 
use Solr instead, and if there's something you need that Solr can't do, 
put your development team to work writing the required plugin.  They 
would likely spend far less time doing that than writing an entire 
search system using Lucene.

Thanks,
Shawn


Re: Benefits of Solr over Lucene?

Posted by JohnRodey <ti...@yahoo.com>.
So I have had a fair amount of experience using Solr.  However on a separate
project we are considering just using Lucene directly, which I have never
done.  I am trying to avoid finding out late that Lucene doesn't offer what
we need and being like "aw snap, it doesn't support geospatial"  (or
highlighting, or dynamic fields, or etc...).  I am more curious about core
index and search features, and not as much with sharding, cloud features,
different client languages and so on.

Any thoughts?

thanks



--
View this message in context: http://lucene.472066.n3.nabble.com/Benefits-of-Solr-over-Lucene-tp4039964p4040009.html
Sent from the Solr - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Re: Benefits of Solr over Lucene?

Posted by Amit Jha <sh...@gmail.com>.
Add to Jack reply, Solr can also be embed into the application and can run on same process. Solr, the server-I zation of lucene. The line is very blurred and solr is not a very thin wrapper around lucene library. 

Most solr features are distinct from lucene like 

- detailed breakdown of scoring mathematics
- text analysis phases
- solr adds to lucene's text analysis library and makes it configurable through XML
- introduce the notion of a field types
- runtime performance stats including cache hit/ miss rate


Rgds
AJ

On 12-Feb-2013, at 22:17, "Jack Krupansky" <ja...@basetechnology.com> wrote:

> Here's yet another short list of benefits of Solr over Lucene (not that any of them take away from Lucene since Solr is based on Lucene):
> 
> - Multiple core index - go beyond the limits of a single lucene index
> - Support for multi-core or named collections
> - richer query parsers (e.g., schema-aware, edismax)
> - schema language, including configurable field types and configurable analyzers
> - easier to do per-field/type analysis
> - plugin architecture, easily configured and customized
> - Generally, develop a search engine without writing any code, and what code you may write is mostly easily configured plugins
> - Editable configuration file rather than hard-coded or app-specific properties
> - Tomcat/Jetty container support enable system administration as corporate IT ops teams already know it
> - Web-based Admin UI, including debugging features such as field/type analysis
> - Solr search features are available to any app written in any language, not just Java. All you need is HTTP access. (Granted, there is SOME support for Lucene in SOME other languages.)
> 
> In short, if you want to embed search engine capabilities in your Java app, Lucene is the way to go, but if you want a "web architecture", with the search engine in a separate process from the "app" in a "multi-tier architecture", Solr is the way to go. Granted, you could also use ElasticSearch or roll your own, but Solr basically "runs right out of the box" with no code development needed to get started and no Java knowledge needed.
> 
> And to be clear, Solr is not simply an "extension" of Lucene - Solr is a distinct architectural component that is based on Lucene. In OOP terms, think of "composition" rather than "derivation".
> 
> -- Jack Krupansky
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: JohnRodey
> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2013 10:40 AM
> To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
> Subject: Benefits of Solr over Lucene?
> 
> I know that Solr web-enables a Lucene index, but I'm trying to figure out
> what other things Solr offers over Lucene.  On the Solr features list it
> says "Solr uses the Lucene search library and extends it!", but what exactly
> are the extensions from the list and what did Lucene give you?  Also if I
> have an index built through Solr is there a non-HTTP way to search that
> index?  Because solr4j essentially just makes HTTP requests correct?
> 
> Some features Im particularly interested in are:
> Geospatial Search
> Highlighting
> Dynamic Fields
> Near Real-Time Indexing
> Multiple Search Indices
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> 
> 
> --
> View this message in context: http://lucene.472066.n3.nabble.com/Benefits-of-Solr-over-Lucene-tp4039964.html
> Sent from the Solr - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. 

Re: Benefits of Solr over Lucene?

Posted by Jack Krupansky <ja...@basetechnology.com>.
Here's yet another short list of benefits of Solr over Lucene (not that any 
of them take away from Lucene since Solr is based on Lucene):

- Multiple core index - go beyond the limits of a single lucene index
- Support for multi-core or named collections
- richer query parsers (e.g., schema-aware, edismax)
- schema language, including configurable field types and configurable 
analyzers
- easier to do per-field/type analysis
- plugin architecture, easily configured and customized
- Generally, develop a search engine without writing any code, and what code 
you may write is mostly easily configured plugins
- Editable configuration file rather than hard-coded or app-specific 
properties
- Tomcat/Jetty container support enable system administration as corporate 
IT ops teams already know it
- Web-based Admin UI, including debugging features such as field/type 
analysis
- Solr search features are available to any app written in any language, not 
just Java. All you need is HTTP access. (Granted, there is SOME support for 
Lucene in SOME other languages.)

In short, if you want to embed search engine capabilities in your Java app, 
Lucene is the way to go, but if you want a "web architecture", with the 
search engine in a separate process from the "app" in a "multi-tier 
architecture", Solr is the way to go. Granted, you could also use 
ElasticSearch or roll your own, but Solr basically "runs right out of the 
box" with no code development needed to get started and no Java knowledge 
needed.

And to be clear, Solr is not simply an "extension" of Lucene - Solr is a 
distinct architectural component that is based on Lucene. In OOP terms, 
think of "composition" rather than "derivation".

-- Jack Krupansky

-----Original Message----- 
From: JohnRodey
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2013 10:40 AM
To: solr-user@lucene.apache.org
Subject: Benefits of Solr over Lucene?

I know that Solr web-enables a Lucene index, but I'm trying to figure out
what other things Solr offers over Lucene.  On the Solr features list it
says "Solr uses the Lucene search library and extends it!", but what exactly
are the extensions from the list and what did Lucene give you?  Also if I
have an index built through Solr is there a non-HTTP way to search that
index?  Because solr4j essentially just makes HTTP requests correct?

Some features Im particularly interested in are:
Geospatial Search
Highlighting
Dynamic Fields
Near Real-Time Indexing
Multiple Search Indices

Thanks!



--
View this message in context: 
http://lucene.472066.n3.nabble.com/Benefits-of-Solr-over-Lucene-tp4039964.html
Sent from the Solr - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.