Chapter 2. Understanding Apache Solr

In the previous chapter, we discussed how big data has evolved to cater to the needs of various organizations, in order to deal with a humongous data size. There are many other challenges while working with data of different shapes. For example, the log files of any application server have semi-structured data or Microsoft Word documents, making it difficult to store the data in traditional relational storage. The challenge to handling such data is not just related to storage: there is also the big question of how to access the required information. Enterprise search engines are designed to address this problem.

Today, finding the required information within a specified timeframe has become more crucial than ever. Enterprises without information retrieval capabilities suffer from problems such as lost productivity of employees, poor decisions based on faulty/incomplete information, duplicated efforts, and so on. Given these scenarios, it is...