With the merging of Apache Lucene and Apache Solr into a single codebase, the release of Solr 3.4 brings with it a host of welcome improvements, introduced in the releases over the past few months, that make search-related applications more powerful, faster, and easier to build. In this paper, you will learn about new search capabilities, performance improvements, new options for building search applications, what to expect in Solr 4, and more.

Since the purchase of Fast Search and Transfer by Microsoft in 2008, users of the FAST ESP Platform have faced a mounting series of challenges. The discontinuation of the Linux platform and the subordination of FAST features into Sharepoint have created a greater sense of urgency to seek out alternatives.

Step-by-step guidelines for veteran DB developers that show how to take on search with Solr, including comparison of conventional SQL-driven programming with the Solr's approach -- for better results with far less programming effort. 

This tutorial provides clear, step-by-step instructions on how to index local text files, local HTML files, and remote HTML files. It is intended for those who have already worked through the Solr Tutorial or equivalent.