[ckan-dev] solr

Thu May 19 10:10:19 UTC 2011

On 19 May 2011 11:03, David Read <david.read at okfn.org> wrote:
> On 19 May 2011 10:29, Friedrich Lindenberg
> <friedrich.lindenberg at okfn.org> wrote:
>> Hi Seb,
>>
>> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Seb Bacon <seb.bacon at okfn.org> wrote:
>>> I was wondering, because supporting *both* postgres FTS *and* solr is
>>> a bit tricky (in fact, we're effectively not supporting both, as the
>>> faceting stuff has only been implemented for installations with solr)
>
> Ok, usual devil's advocate stuff...
>
> It feels like a fair bit of work to get the whole dev team and all
> clients onto SOLR.
>
> What's the problem with the status quo of having faceting as an
> optional feature?

I don't think there's a big problem right now.  I can just see it
becoming a problem when we start using solr features more extensively.
 IIRC *not* having solr, at least relatively recently, wasn't handled
elegantly in the code.  My fear is that this is likely to happen more
over time.

There's also a kind of branding/perception issue: over time, with
postgres, you're getting a relatively scrappier user experience
compared with solr.  We don't need to remove postgres support, but we
could officially deprecate it, i.e. all new installs and documentation
assume solr installed.

> Seb and Friedrich, do you have we got a new feature or requirement
> that you have in mind? If there is no other agenda or plan here then I
> see no benefit to this proposed work.

I don't see it as a feature but as refactoring to reduce technical debt.

As I say, I would be happy with officially deprecating non-solr
installs rather than migrating or similar.  But we owe our new users
clarity over what is recommended, I think.

Seb

>>> We're in a funny half-way place right now as the Solr stuff needs more
>>> hand-holding and documentation to allow people to easily run with it,
>>> but with postgres you don't get our full functionality.
>>
>> Thats very true and my opinion on it would be to drop Postgres FTS
>> support. Solr search is excellent and since search is a core feature
>> of CKAN (until we've all figured out what "data collaboration" really
>> means its not inaccurate to say it is *the* core) I think the
>> additional overhead of deploying a Java-based service might be
>> justified. Removing Psql-FTS would drive down the complexity of the
>> search code significantly.
>>
>> This certainly needs some more discussion but I'd like this thread to
>> end in voting or a BDFL judgement.
>> - Friedrich
>>
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