The Apache projects Lucene and Solr are now available in version 8.7.0. While the update of the Java library Lucene Core comes up with extended compression functions for stored fields, the Solr enterprise search server features both performance improvements for the ExportWriter and the first approaches for a new so-called circuit breaker infrastructure, the switches or breakers for a more efficient handling of indexing and search queries.

Better compression The Java library Lucene Core provides indexing and search functions for the open source search server Solr as the basis of the project of the same name. One of the notable innovations in version 8.7 is the improved compression for stored fields. If there are greater redundancies in text files across documents, the stored fields can now use dictionaries to improve the compression rate. That should be equally good in the two modes BEST_SPEED and BEST_COMPRESSION work.

Version 8.7 of the enterprise search server Solr contributes to improved performance when retrieving, sorting and writing documents in ExportWriter. Double buffering is used to parallelize the sort / retrieve and write operations that have been carried out sequentially with the handler / export . A buffered batch is written out, which is sorted and retrieved, while the other batch is prepared in a background thread. When both are finished, the buffers are swapped.

More efficient processing of requests A new circuit breaker In addition, the infrastructure should optimize the processing of indexing and search queries. A JVM memory-based switch, for example, monitors incoming searches in the future and rejects them with the error message SERVICE_TOO_BUSY as soon as a specified threshold is exceeded. In this way, more leeway can be created for ongoing indexing and search queries.

Further details can be found in the official announcements from Apache Lucene and Solr. A full list of new features and changes, such as some deprecated features that will probably disappear in Solr 9, can be found in the release notes for the library and search server.

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