Shenandoah Ruby Users Group October Meetup

Searching with Solr

Do what your database can't: faceted navigation, result highlighting, fuzzy queries, ranked scoring, spell correction, and more. Eric Pugh from OpenSourceConnections will give us some insights he obtained while writing one of the first Solr books to hit market.

So you're building a website and want a terrific search experience for your users. How are sites like Netflix.com and Zappos.com doing it?

Solr, the open-source enterprise search server is the answer. Solr bridges the technology divide between databases and document/web search engines (e.g. Google). Each has its uses but do not overlap.
Chances are you have some structured data, probably in a database, and perhaps some related text documents. When you bring this data into Solr, you'll be able to deliver amazing features. Users will be able to navigate search results by filtering on aggregated attributes (so- called “faceted search”). Furthermore, various features like spell- correcting, auto-completing of search text, boosting records based on various rules, become possible. Solr does not tie you to a particular programming language or computing platform. And whether you have a thousand records or millions and many requests per second, Solr can scale to meet your performance needs. Furthermore, as an open-source solution, Solr doesn't ask you for more money when you want more out of it.

We'll look at the thriving Ruby ecosystem that has grown up around integrating with Solr. From Ruby gems that integrate with Solr like solrb and rsolr, to general search solutions like acts_as_solr and sunspot. We'll also look at a complete "shrink wrapped" catalog solution for Solr using BlacklightOPAC.

You'll lean the basics of getting started with Solr, and an understanding of what Ruby solutions are available to simplifying adding great search to your site!

As usual, food and beverages will be provided.