Thanks Ian for sharing your knowledge on this. We've been going through the recently published "Solr 1.4 Enterprise Search Server" book and came across some stuff that means - Acts_as_Solr schema could be less flexible when it comes to complex indexing and faceting of the fields.
We are still exploring Flare/solr-ruby. The concern with using JRuby and Solr_Ruby is that JRuby is only half the fast as C implementation of Ruby. The Flare is not mature enough. So, It doesn't meet our release fast release often plan. Has anyone on the form implemented faceting with Acts_as_solr? If yes, how complex/flexible was it? Regards Rajan On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 12:43 PM, Ian Connor <ian.con...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > Thanks for the discussion. We use the distributed option so I am not sure > embedded is possible. > > As you also guessed, we use haproxy for load balancing and failover between > replicas of the shards so giving this up for a minor performance boost is > probably not wise. > > So essentially we have: User -> HTTP Load Balancer -> Mogrel Cluster -> > Haproxy -> N x Solr Shards > > and it looks like that is the standard setup for performance from what you > suggest here and most of the performance tweaks I thought of are already in > use. > > Ian. > > On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 3:09 AM, Erik Hatcher <erik.hatc...@gmail.com > >wrote: > > > > > On Sep 18, 2009, at 1:09 AM, rajan chandi wrote: > > > >> We are planning to use the external Solr on tomcat for scalability > >> reasons. > >> > >> We thought that EmbeddedSolrServer uses HTTP too to talk with Ruby and > >> vise-versa as in acts_as_solr ruby plugin. > >> > > > > EmbeddedSolrServer is a way to run Solr as an API (like Lucene) rather > than > > with any web container involved at all. In other words, only Java can > use > > EmbeddedSolrServer (which means JRuby works great). > > > > The acts_as_solr plugin uses the solr-ruby library to communicate with > > Solr. Under solr-ruby, it's HTTP with ruby (wt=ruby) formatted responses > > for searches, and documents being indexed get converted to Solr's XML > format > > and POSTed to the Solr URL used to open the Solr::Connection > > > > Erik > > > > > > > > > >> If Ruby is not using the HTTP to talk EmbeddedSolrServer, what is it > >> using? > >> > >> Thanks and Regards > >> Rajan Chandi > >> > >> On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Erik Hatcher <erik.hatc...@gmail.com > >> >wrote: > >> > >> > >>> On Sep 17, 2009, at 11:40 AM, Ian Connor wrote: > >>> > >>> Is there any support for connection pooling or a more optimized data > >>>> exchange format? > >>>> > >>>> > >>> The solr-ruby library (as do other Solr + Ruby libraries) use the ruby > >>> response format and eval it. solr-ruby supports keeping the HTTP > >>> connection > >>> alive too. > >>> > >>> We are looking at any further ways to optimize the solr > >>> > >>>> queries so we can possibly make more of them in the one request. > >>>> > >>>> The JSON like format seems pretty tight but I understand when the > >>>> distributed search takes place it uses a binary protocol instead of > >>>> text. > >>>> I > >>>> wanted to know if that was available or could be available via the > ruby > >>>> library. > >>>> > >>>> Is it possible to host a local shard and skip HTTP between ruby and > >>>> solr? > >>>> > >>>> > >>> If you use JRuby you can do some fancy stuff, like use the javabin > update > >>> and response formats so no XML is involved, and you could also use > Solr's > >>> EmbeddedSolrServer to avoid HTTP. However, in practice rarely is HTTP > >>> the > >>> bottleneck and actually offers a lot of advantages, such as easy > >>> commodity > >>> load balancing and caching. > >>> > >>> But JRuby + Solr is a very beautiful way to go! > >>> > >>> If you're using MRI Ruby, though, you don't really have any options > other > >>> than to go over HTTP. You could use json or ruby formatted responses - > >>> I'd > >>> be curious to see some performance numbers comparing those two. > >>> > >>> Erik > >>> > >>> > >>> > > > > > -- > Regards, > > Ian Connor > 1 Leighton St #723 > Cambridge, MA 02141 > Call Center Phone: +1 (714) 239 3875 (24 hrs) > Fax: +1(770) 818 5697 > Skype: ian.connor >
