...to everyone who helps make Lucene and Solr such fantastic tools.
I'm the Platform Architect for a leading online event ticket after-marketplace (think eBay for tickets), and we've just completed a 12 month project to rewrite the Browse and Search components of our customer-facing site. Both rely heavily on Solr and a smattering of custom Lucene API calls throughout the code base. As of this morning (2 weeks after our final-stage push to production), we've reduced our hardware needs over 50% and have improved page response times by 30-60% as compared to the old architecture (a mix of very old CF code for the browse pieces, and a couple GSAs for the seach pages). More importantly, we've established new patterns and flex points for future growth, and I have utmost confidence that we'll be leveraging the Lucene/Solr combo for years to come as we grow. The devs are proud, the execs are happy, our customers have noticed the speed improvements, and we all learned many positive lessons along the way. These forums and various online resources (the Solr wiki first and foremost) have been tremendously helpful. And so, thank you, all, for pointing the way to a simpler, faster, better solution for our needs. Cass Costello -- A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. - John Gaule
