Early Access Release #4 for Solr 4.x Deep Dive is now available for download on Lulu.com

Okay, it's hot off the e-presses: Solr 4.x Deep Dive, Early Access Release #4 is now available for purchase and download as an e-book for $9.99 on Lulu.com at:

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/jack-krupansky/solr-4x-deep-dive-early-access-release-1/ebook/product-21120181.html

 

(That link says "1", but it apparently correctly redirects to EAR #4.)

 

I completed updates for the recent release of Solr 4.4 just four days ago. That was the primary focus of this EAR.

 

Summary of changes:

• Covered changes to NGramTokenizer and NGramFilter for Solr 4.4
• Covered addition of lcmap for normalization mapping of language identifiers in language detection update processors
• Coverage for the maxscore query parser for Solr 4.4
• Coverage for the switch query parser for Solr 4.2
• Covered changes to <mergePolicy> for Solr 4.4
• Added detailed descriptions for other pre-4.4 merge policy classes
• Added a couple of appendices – intro to XML, intro to regular expressions, URL encodings
• Added a new chapter for "Schemaless Discovery Mode"
• Lucene infostream now can be sent to the Solr log file
• ByteField and ShortField field types deprecated in schema
• Added notes about order of evaluation for overlapping dynamic field patterns
• Other minor Solr 4.4 changes
• More formatting cleanup and indexing improvements
• Summary comparison of the book to the new Apache Solr Reference Guide

Total of 69 pages of additional content.

 

The Solr 4.4 changes are all indexed. Lookup "4.4" under "Solr release" in the index for a clickable list of pages with changes for Solr 4.4.

 

Although some of those changes are in fact documented in the Lucene and Solr Javadoc and Solr Reference Manual and Solr wiki (all available FOR FREE!), I focus on providing greater detail and a lot more examples – a deeper dive. For example, the book includes a full list of all of the tokenizers, all of the token filters, and all of the update processors, and full descriptions for all options in solrconfig.

 

This EAR was actually a week early (well, I wanted it to be published yesterday, but...). Solr 4.4 released this week and I was essentially done with my 4.4 updates for the book, and the new Apache Solr Reference Guide is now available, so it seemed like good timing. And now I have almost three weeks to do some more significant coverage than the catch-up of the latest EARs.

 

I wouldn't bill EAR#4 as a "major" release – if you already have EAR#1 or #2 or #3, you may want to hold off for another release or two, although there have been LOTS of improvements.

 

Please feel free to email or comment on this blog for any questions or issues related to the book.

 

Thanks!

-- Jack Krupansky