3 ms·

Congrats to the LinkedIn and IndexTank folks for the successful exit/acquisition. Apologies for tooting my own horn here, but for anyone wondering about altern

Congrats to the LinkedIn and IndexTank folks for the successful exit/acquisition. Apologies for tooting my own horn here, but for anyone wondering about alternatives for hosted search, there's always Apache Solr and fizx's and my hosted service at http://websolr.com/ http://websolr.com/. We're bootstrapped, profitable, and going on two years old. And we intend to be around for a while! Feel free to hit me up with questions!

nostromo 15y ago
You list Java as supported on this page, but the link 404s. http://websolr.com/guides/solr/clients http://websolr.com/guides/solr/clients Do you guys support Java integration?
- cedrichurst 15y ago
  I don't work for websolr, but I do quite a bit of work with Apache Solr. I'd imagine Java integration is supported through the native Java client, http://wiki.apache.org/solr/Solrj http://wiki.apache.org/solr/Solrj, which is maintained by the Solr team. There are also a number of Solr client libraries for Python, Ruby, PHP, etc. All searches against a Solr index take place over HTTP through an RPC interface, so building an API for a specific language relatively straightforward.
- nzadrozny 15y ago
  Thanks for the heads up on that 404, I'll take care of that. See cedrichurst's comment for what I ought to be linking to.
jhdavids8 15y ago
I contemplated websolr recently but went with IndexTank simply due to the free storage they provided. It's nice to test out the service in dev mode to see if it's a good fit before committing to paying for it. Any chance Websolr offers an option like this down the road? Plus, Solr just seemed to struggle with geo search. I used Sunspot as my search interface and had to specify a minimum precision of 6 (supposedly a 6+ mile bounding box) to get any results, even those that were less than a mile away. I know Solr uses geohashing, but it just appeared wildly inaccurate...at least for me.
- nzadrozny 15y ago
  > Any chance Websolr offers an option like this down the road? We're definitely open to adding easier free trials. As a developer myself, I respect when a service meets you half-way on that initial integration cost. In the mean time, we're pretty liberal with trials. Hit me up at info@onemorecloud.com if you're interested and I'll hook you up with a free month to try things out.
- nzadrozny 15y ago
  > Plus, Solr just seemed to struggle with geo search. I hear you on that. Solr only relatively recently got a decent, official Spatial search API with its version 3 release. We've got a Solr 3 cluster up at Websolr (with lots of other tasty stuff, like real-time updates), but Sunspot is lagging behind a bit. I'm one of the maintainers of Sunspot and we're pushing out a new 1.3 maintenance/bugfix release within the next few days, which should clear the way for Solr 3 support -- and much better spatial search -- in Sunspot 1.4.
  - jhdavids8 15y ago
    Fantastic. I just sent the email. I'll be on the lookout for Sunspot 1.4 and its improvements in geo search. Thanks!
holdenk 15y ago
I'm kind of curious as to what sort of performance improvements your normally able to get for people?
- nzadrozny 15y ago
  Performance improvements relative to... what? We do get a surprising number of people who are upgrading from SQL LIKE queries. In a situation like that, you might see queries that take a few seconds to scan through a table in SQL get cut down to a few dozen milliseconds to fetch results from an index. That's just a good example of using the right tool for the job. It would be a little tricky to compare performance to self-hosting, given the myriad of variables involved. And as far as other services go, perhaps someone else can speak to that. Or maybe you have a more specific scenario in mind?

nostromo 15y ago

You list Java as supported on this page, but the link 404s. http://websolr.com/guides/solr/clients http://websolr.com/guides/solr/clients Do you guys support Java integration?

cedrichurst 15y ago
I don't work for websolr, but I do quite a bit of work with Apache Solr. I'd imagine Java integration is supported through the native Java client, http://wiki.apache.org/solr/Solrj http://wiki.apache.org/solr/Solrj, which is maintained by the Solr team. There are also a number of Solr client libraries for Python, Ruby, PHP, etc. All searches against a Solr index take place over HTTP through an RPC interface, so building an API for a specific language relatively straightforward.
nzadrozny 15y ago
Thanks for the heads up on that 404, I'll take care of that. See cedrichurst's comment for what I ought to be linking to.

jhdavids8 15y ago

I contemplated websolr recently but went with IndexTank simply due to the free storage they provided. It's nice to test out the service in dev mode to see if it's a good fit before committing to paying for it. Any chance Websolr offers an option like this down the road? Plus, Solr just seemed to struggle with geo search. I used Sunspot as my search interface and had to specify a minimum precision of 6 (supposedly a 6+ mile bounding box) to get any results, even those that were less than a mile away. I know Solr uses geohashing, but it just appeared wildly inaccurate...at least for me.

nzadrozny 15y ago
> Any chance Websolr offers an option like this down the road? We're definitely open to adding easier free trials. As a developer myself, I respect when a service meets you half-way on that initial integration cost. In the mean time, we're pretty liberal with trials. Hit me up at info@onemorecloud.com if you're interested and I'll hook you up with a free month to try things out.
nzadrozny 15y ago
> Plus, Solr just seemed to struggle with geo search. I hear you on that. Solr only relatively recently got a decent, official Spatial search API with its version 3 release. We've got a Solr 3 cluster up at Websolr (with lots of other tasty stuff, like real-time updates), but Sunspot is lagging behind a bit. I'm one of the maintainers of Sunspot and we're pushing out a new 1.3 maintenance/bugfix release within the next few days, which should clear the way for Solr 3 support -- and much better spatial search -- in Sunspot 1.4.
- jhdavids8 15y ago
  Fantastic. I just sent the email. I'll be on the lookout for Sunspot 1.4 and its improvements in geo search. Thanks!

holdenk 15y ago

I'm kind of curious as to what sort of performance improvements your normally able to get for people?

nzadrozny 15y ago
Performance improvements relative to... what? We do get a surprising number of people who are upgrading from SQL LIKE queries. In a situation like that, you might see queries that take a few seconds to scan through a table in SQL get cut down to a few dozen milliseconds to fetch results from an index. That's just a good example of using the right tool for the job. It would be a little tricky to compare performance to self-hosting, given the myriad of variables involved. And as far as other services go, perhaps someone else can speak to that. Or maybe you have a more specific scenario in mind?