Solr – Open Source Enterprise Search Server

We have been using Lucene for a while. It is embedded in our InfoMinder product (mostly for filtering content). I was happy to find an entire Enterprise Search solution called Solr. It is an Apache project (in incubation) and seems to have some great features.

Solr is a standalone enterprise search server with a web-services like API. You put documents in it (called “indexing”) via XML over HTTP. You query it via HTTP GET and receive XML results.

 

  • Advanced Full-Text Search Capabilities
  • Optimized for High Volume Web Traffic
  • Standards Based Open Interfaces – XML and HTTP
  • Comprehensive HTML Administration Interfaces
  • Scalability – Efficient Replication to other Solr Search Servers
  • Flexible and Adaptable with XML configuration
  • Extensible Plugin Architecture

There seems to be even hosted solutions for Solr.

 

What can you do with Solr?

By buying a box and hosting Solr on it, you may have a simple Search Appliance. This can be used by enterprises for document search in the intranet. It can also be used as the backend of a content management system or a wiki. It will be interesting to play with this tool. It is also a potential backend for lots of Search mashups.

Update: 26th Jan 07

Tim’s question about hosting made me go back and search the web. Here are some good resources I found in the process:

Solr: Indexing XML with Lucence

Public Websites using Solr

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