Advanced development with eZ Find - part 3 : Leveraging the Solr syntax

Conclusion

This last post presents how eZ Find helps working around and/or extending legacy eZ Publish fetches, by for instance using a cross-content-class query, or by relying on Apache Solr's native filters (Lucene syntax).

eZ Find constitutes one of the major breakthroughs of eZ Publish, proposing a first step towards the next CMS generations, namely :

• An advanced indexing and querying system. The current integration level of Solr in eZ Find is close to exhaustive, placing eZ Publish a step ahead its Open Source concurrents
• A dynamic storage system : currently handled through am obsolete SQL / Filesystem layer, should evolve towards a dynamic storage system as MongoDB or CouchDB. It probably is eZ Systems' next challenge
• Both an exhaustive and well-performing API and Framework : a key project for eZ Publish, which would deserve a better performing template engine, and most important, a thorough low-level workflow layer, proposing hooks in many, key places in all available operations : what is the future of Zeta Components in this regard ? Should a wide-spread framework be used instead (Zend) ?

We can also raise the the subject of convergence between professional CMSes and DMSes (Document Management Systems, like Alfresco). Both universes tend to come closer functionally, when it comes to achieving the three points mentioned right above (indexing, storage, API).

As many questions and challenges eZ Systems will have to address within the forthcoming months or years, relying on a major asset : eZ Find is already functioning, widely used, extensively field-tested, extensible and highly competitive when it comes to complex and professional deployments.

I would like to thank Nicolas Pastorino for translating this tutorial to english, and Paul Borgermans for his availability.

Resources

• eZ Find 2.2 official documentation :
  http://ez.no/doc/extensions/ez_find/2_2
• eZ Find source code : here
• Apache Solr Wiki : http://wiki.apache.org/solr/
• Tutorial on eZPedia.org : "How to create a template operator"
  http://ezpedia.org/ez/template_operators
• Keyword fetching documentation : here
• Lucene query parser syntax :
  http://lucene.apache.org/java/2_9_1/queryparsersyntax.html
• eZ Find's Solr schema definition file : here
• Solr Copy Fields documentation :
  http://wiki.apache.org/solr/SchemaXml#Copy_Fields

This tutorial is available for offline reading :
Gilles Guirand - Advanced development with eZ Find - part 3 - Leveraging Solr's syntax - PDF Version

About the author : Gilles Guirand

Gilles Guirand is a certified eZ Publish Developer. He is widely acknowledged by the community to be one of the national experts on highly technical and complex eZ Publish issues. With over 12 years experience in designing complex web architectures, he has been the driving force behind some of the most ambitious eZ Publish Projects: Web Site Generators, HighAvailability, Widgets, SOA, eZ Find, SSO, Web Accessibility and IT systems Integrations.

License

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons – Share Alike license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 ).