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 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4 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:  Solr 3.4 includes improved query support, including the ability to sort by function queries, as well as improved analysis and new input and output formats.
• Performance improvements: Under the hood, Lucene and Solr 3.4 provide better index segment management, as well as providing previously unavailable distributed support for spellchecking.
• New options for building search applications: In addition to making things easier for you with features such as range facets and a new Velocity-driven search UI, Solr 3.4 includes a number of exciting new features that open up whole new areas of exploration in terms of building search applications. These include spatial search and the ability to search unstructured information using Apache UIMA.
• What to expect in Solr 4: Even as Solr 3.4 hits the net, new features destined for Solr 4 are making waves where they're available, and we'll look at a few of them and how they'll affect you.