Hi, I would rather go for the boolean variant and spend some time writing a query parser which tries to understand all kinds of input people may make, mapping it into boolean filters. In this way you can support both navigation and search and keep both in sync whatever people prefert to start with. I'm not saying it is easy to write such a parser, but you know the domain and the users...
Another reason for doing it this way is that if you have a field does_smoke=true, you still want to match if someone writes "not smoking". Your parser would have to understand negations, e.g. through a set of regex ((not|non|no) (smoker|smoking|smoke))... You could always do a mix also - to keep a free-text field as well, and any words that your parser does not understand can be passed through to the free-text as a "should" term with a boost. -- Jan Høydahl, search solution architect Cominvent AS - www.cominvent.com Training in Europe - www.solrtraining.com On 2. juli 2010, at 18.36, Saïd Radhouani wrote: > Hi, > > I have the following kind of data to index in a multilingual context: is_man, > is_single, has_job, etc. > > Logically, the underlying fields have a value of "yes" or "no." That's why > the boolean type would be appropriate. But my problem is, in addition to be > able to filter on these fields, I would like to give my users the possibility > to search against these fields using free text. i.e., a query might be > "single man having job." Therefore, I think that the boolean type is not > appropriate anymore. Instead, I'm thinking of using the string type, and each > field will be either empty (the "no" case), or populated by its own tag. > e.g., if we deal about a man, the field is_man will contain the string "man." > Then, I copy all these fields into a text field that I ca user for free text > search. > > Does that make sense? > > Does that make sense in a multilingual context, i.e., field tags can be > different in each language (EN => man, single, jog, FR => homme, célibataire, > emploi, etc.) > > Thanks! > > -Saïd
