Before you start

This tutorial is for developers and IT professionals that would like to use the Apache Solr enterprise search server as an enterprise-class search engine for the company intranet or other demanding search engine applications. It is also for those interested in implementing Apache Solr APIs to integrate new or existing applications with Apache Solr's searchable index.

About this tutorial

This tutorial shows the advantages and simplicity of using Apache Solr as an enterprise search engine. Note that since Apache Solr is based on Apache Lucene, some of the concepts you'll learn will be useful for Apache Lucene, as well.

You'll learn how to do the following:

• Install Apache Solr
• Use Solr's command-line features
• Use Solr's admin interface
• Use Solr's HTTP XML interface
• Integrate a Web application with Apache Solr's HTTP XML interface

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System requirements

Besides Apache Solr, this tutorial requires other technologies. For instance, Apache Solr requires a Web container like Apache Tomcat. Following is the full list.

Apache Solr

When it comes to open source enterprise-class search engines, you'll need Lucene, which Apache Solr is based off of. Apache Solr has extra bells and whistles to make your enterprise search engine work harder for you. The latest version was 1.2 at the time of this writing.

Apache Tomcat V5.5

This tutorial will use Apache Tomcat as the servlet container. However, there are other possibilities, such as Jetty.

Apache V2

This tutorial uses Apache V2 as the hosting server of the Web application you'll integrate with the Solr APIs.

PHP V5

You'll build a PHP Web application that you'll integrate with the Solr APIs.

Web browser

Mozilla Firefox is recommended.

You'll learn more about installing Apache Solr before you begin using it later in the tutorial. To learn more about installing and configuring Apache V2 and PHP, see Resources.

You do not need to be an expert in Apache or Java™ technology to complete this tutorial successfully. This tutorial explains how to create a high-performance search engine using Apache Lucene, Solr, and related projects in a step-by-step manner. It does not explain the nuances of the Lucene API. developerWorks has published Apache Lucene articles that provide extensive discussions. We recommend starting with these articles if this tutorial skirts an issue of interest to you.

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Table of contents

• Before you start
• Introduction
• Quick installation guide
• The schema
• Indexing data and running sample search queries
• Creating a Solrized PHP Web application
• Summary
• Download
• Resources
• About the author

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