Magento Enterprise 1.8 Features Solr

Very interesting to read about the latest Magento Enterprise version release. Among other things, they have implemented Solr for searching. Solr is what can only be called a “proper search engine” and is the alternative to searching a database which is the usual way the Magento search works.

By using a proper search engine, the site will be able to display better, more relevant results a lot faster than is possible with the database driven method. The main downside is that its complex to set up.

It will be interesting to see if a paid or community extension becomes available to provide Solr to community edition users.

There is a Google Code project, but it seems to be dead in the water:

http://code.google.com/p/magento-solr/