Understanding Solr and Alfresco integration
Searching in Alfresco is supported via the Solr4 search engine. Solr4 works as a standalone enterprise application. It is built in Java and uses lucene internally for indexing. Solr extends the lucene library to add new features around it and make it a standalone application. It exposes the REST API for searching and submitting content for indexing. It supports the indexing of any data via JSON/XML/CSV or binary. The search request is also supported by a HTTP Get request. Using HTTP, GET data can be searched using Solr.
Solr4 can be installed as an integral application with Alfresco on the same application server or it can be installed completely on a separate machine. The latest version of Solr4 also supports the clustering and sharding of indexing.
There are various advantages of Solr:
Scalable
Better performance
Allows Facet search and more accurate results
Easy monitoring and administration
Asynchronous indexing near to real time
Compact disk formats...
