Improving User Experience with Solr

What is SOLR search? First off, it’s fast.

SOLR (pronounced “Solar”) is an open-source, enterprise-search platform built in Java that returns search responses extremely fast. At its core is the Lucene Java Search library that allows full-text indexing. Solr’s speed is because it does not search the text directly but an index.

To sum it up, SOLR search improves users’ experience at websites with faster responses and helps them find what they need in fewer clicks.

Used by Apple, NASA, and others

SOLR works in IT, scientific research, Energy, HR, healthcare, retail, and many applications. Solr plays can help applications that have sophisticated search and analytics requirements. Some of the organizations leveraging Solr are Apple, Netflix, Instagram, NASA, and Goldman Sachs. And one of the most common use cases for Solr is that it is used on websites to improve the end-user experience by optimizing the search to provide much faster responses that will help the users to access the required information in a minimum number of clicks.

Solving a client’s integration with Solr

Recently, one of our clients faced multiple issues integrating SOLR with the Adobe Experience Manager Platform. The client was looking to integrate Solr search with AEM for searching and indexing a set of AEM pages. It wasn’t working. The objective of the integration was to provide a robust search capability and optimization on the product pages to enhance the end-user experience. After a tiring trial-and-error process, they came to us. Infogain’s AEM developers delivered a “Proof of Concept”  successfully demonstrating how the integration would work and offering sample case uses.

How did we go about it?

We took the actual problem statement and discussed it with the client to ensure that our definition of the issue was aligned. The flowchart below provides an overview of the steps:

The End result

Showing how SOLR integration with AEM resulted in a delighted client. It also opened up the doors for our team to be involved in core architecture discussions.

Are you interested in how we can bring Solr search to your site and help with other integrations? We’d love to help. Please email us here, and our experts will get back to you.