This chapter covers
- Using and creating your own function queries
- Geospatial searching
- Multilevel pivot faceting
- Referencing external data sources in queries
- Utilizing Solr for big data analytics
Although Solr serves as a powerful text search engine, finding and returning documents based upon keywords is far from its only common use. You have seen many of Solr’s core document search capabilities—such as rich text analysis, hit highlighting, and results grouping—that enhance the relevancy and usefulness of the list of results returned for a query. Although presenting the specific documents that best match a query is important for many search applications, another common use case for Solr is reporting aggregate results for data analytics capabilities. Pivot faceting, Solr’s ability to return multiple levels of hierarchical facet results, enables the computation of an arbitrary number of aggregate breakdowns in a single Solr request, making Solr efficient for use in data analytics reporting.