We've recently launched a huge project where we implemented Solr as the search platform. Even though Solr is quite easy to get started with, we've got a few tips and pointers to make life with Solr easier for you!
Know your configuration files
We had some initial trouble with the Solr configuration files, normally located under C:/solr/conf. The most important configuration files are solrconfig.xml and schema.xml.
- In schema.xml, make sure the fields matches those you've defined in your application.
- The config files are case sensitive! Make sure you spell copyField, multiValued etc correctly.
- If you don't need elevation and have problems with configuration, try turning off the elevate.xml handler by uncommenting the appropriate lines in solrconfig.xml.
Improve performance by customizing solrconfig.xml
Solrconfig.xml holds a lot of fun stuff. Here you can setup Solr to improve the performance. If your hardware is up for it, that is.
Here are a few elements to get your started:
- mergeFactor decides what size your index segments should have, thus either improving indexing or searching.
- ramBufferSizeMB sets the amount of RAM available for Solr, before documents are flushed.
- autoWarmCount may be used to pre-populate data from the search index.
Here's a great wiki page on Solr and performance, for further reading and available configuration options.
Use an absolutely unique key
You should define a unique key that will always be unique for a specific item in your Solr index. Either you assign this unique key an auto generated GUID, or you use Solr's built in UniqueKey field.
<fieldType name="uuid" class="solr.UUIDField" indexed="true" />
Also add a field of the UUID type:
<field name="uid" type="uuid" indexed="true" stored="true"
default="NEW" />
Finally, point out the field as the unique key:
<uniqueKey>uid</uniqueKey>
