Answers.Body: <p>Considering that you foresee this as a significant challenge for you, I'd like to suggest that it may not be worth the trouble. CiviCRM is unlike within content management systems, where searches are for snippets from among a handful of long text fields. Instead, there are hundreds of fields to search, but you're usually looking for the exact or nearly-exact value.</p>
  
  <p>Consequently, the advanced full-text indexing that Solr would provide would be wasted in most CiviCRM searches.  You'd also need to index all the tables (including ones that don't exist yet, as custom data tables are created on the fly and they're among the most-frequently searched).  Even the most simple searches by city or email address can involve a bunch of database joins.</p>
  
  <p>In sum, I'm not sure Solr search would be worth it even if you had a bunch of solid developers and an open checkbook.  (The only reasonable example I can think of offhand is if you give out a bunch of grants and need a way to search among a ton of proposals.)  If you aren't confident in your abilities, you won't want to embark on something this expansive and experimental.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-25T01:44:59.563Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2015-08-25T01:44:59.563Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Andie Hunt
Answers.Body: <p>Just to second Andrews comments. We've done some previous work at Compucorp with CiviCRM + Elastic Search (which is similar to SOLR in some respects) and it involves a significant amount of work to create SQL functions to index the data and then produce the search interface.</p>
  
  <p>It may be worth knowing more about your reasons for wanting to use SOLR (Scalability? Full text searching? Read ahead? Data dashboarding?) in order to determine what may be the best approach.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2015-08-26T00:09:39.530Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2015-08-26T00:09:39.530Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Jamie Novick - Compucorp
Body: <p>I want to set up CiviCrm so that I can use Apache Solr to do a full search. Which CiviCRM tables should I import into Apache Solr?</p>
  
  <p>Is importing tables the correct approach?</p>
  
  <p>I am not a developer so this will be a significant challenge to me.</p>
  
  <p>I am using drupal 7.</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2015-08-23T20:15:47.960Z
Comments.Text: Bill, care to flesh out what parts of Civi you want searched by Solr?
Comments.UserDisplayName: petednz - fuzion
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2015-08-25T07:06:23.947Z
Comments.Text: What is not clear in your answer is why you want to integrate Apache SOLR. You came up with a solution which is Apache SOLR but do not state the problem. As Andrew states below CiviCRM has a very powerful search functionality and usually users are searching for specifics.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Jaap Jansma - CiviCooP
Tags: <drupal>
Title: CiviCRM and Apache Solr Search
ThreadText: # CiviCRM and Apache Solr Search
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2015-08-23)
  
  I want to set up CiviCrm so that I can use Apache Solr to do a full search. Which CiviCRM tables should I import into Apache Solr?
  
  Is importing tables the correct approach?
  
  I am not a developer so this will be a significant challenge to me.
  
  I am using drupal 7.
  
  **Tags:** drupal
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: Bill, care to flesh out what parts of Civi you want searched by Solr?  
  > **username_2**: What is not clear in your answer is why you want to integrate Apache SOLR. You came up with a solution which is Apache SOLR but do not state the problem. As Andrew states below CiviCRM has a very powerful search functionality and usually users are searching for specifics.  
  
  ---
  
  ## 2 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_3 on 2015-08-25. Score: 6
  
  Considering that you foresee this as a significant challenge for you, I'd like to suggest that it may not be worth the trouble. CiviCRM is unlike within content management systems, where searches are for snippets from among a handful of long text fields. Instead, there are hundreds of fields to search, but you're usually looking for the exact or nearly-exact value.
  
  Consequently, the advanced full-text indexing that Solr would provide would be wasted in most CiviCRM searches. You'd also need to index all the tables (including ones that don't exist yet, as custom data tables are created on the fly and they're among the most-frequently searched). Even the most simple searches by city or email address can involve a bunch of database joins.
  
  In sum, I'm not sure Solr search would be worth it even if you had a bunch of solid developers and an open checkbook. (The only reasonable example I can think of offhand is if you give out a bunch of grants and need a way to search among a ton of proposals.) If you aren't confident in your abilities, you won't want to embark on something this expansive and experimental.
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_4 on 2015-08-26. Score: 1
  
  Just to second Andrews comments. We've done some previous work at Compucorp with CiviCRM + Elastic Search (which is similar to SOLR in some respects) and it involves a significant amount of work to create SQL functions to index the data and then produce the search interface.
  
  It may be worth knowing more about your reasons for wanting to use SOLR (Scalability? Full text searching? Read ahead? Data dashboarding?) in order to determine what may be the best approach.
  
  
  ---
  
  