Re: Abandoning Searchable Plugin

> Graeme,
>
> that's the solution that involved hacking the Grails source code.  You asked
> him a question in the comments, to which he responded with a question that
> you never responded back to.  Perhaps you could take the opportunity now?
>
> -Dustin
>
> On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 3:54 PM, Graeme Rocher <graeme@...> wrote:
>>
>> Mike got it clustering with terracotta -
>>
>> http://mike.brevoort.com/2008/01/29/terracotta-1-grails-searchable-pluginme-1/
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 7:10 PM, Darryl Pentz <djpentz@...> wrote:
>> > Yeah, I can understand your frustration that led you to switch to Solr.
>> > I also found that the documentation differed with the reality.
>> >
>> > I don't for one moment want to seem unappreciative of the Searchable
>> > plugin. One look at its source code will give you immediate appreciation for
>> > all the hard work Maurice has invested in it. It was unfortunate for me that
>> > a) Maurice was away at the time that I started incorporating the Searchable
>> > plugin into my app - and seems to not be around much anymore these days too
>> > and b) the move to a Grails-based grails.org happened around the same time I
>> > needed to investigate the Searchable features more intimately, which has
>> > affected the documentation.
>> >
>> > Unfortunately all that good intention and appreciation doesn't help me
>> > explain to my boss why feature X isn't working, so at some point one has to
>> > make a decision. So far I've been fortunate that I've been able to get past
>> > most of the obstacles, but the lack of clustering is one I wasn't aware of
>> > and may come back to bite me in the end. I currently don't need clustering,
>> > even though it's not a hobby project ;-) but who knows what requirements lie
>> > in wait in the future.
>> >
>> > I hope (and pray) that Maurice will be able to continue work on
>> > Searchable with time. I would love to myself but after looking at his code,
>> > I don't consider myself capable of continuing the excellent standard he's
>> > set.
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > Darryl
>> >
>> > ----- Original Message ----
>> > From: Jean-Noël Rivasseau <elvanor@...>
>> > To: user@...
>> > Sent: Wednesday, June 4, 2008 6:50:32 PM
>> > Subject: Re: [grails-user] Abandoning Searchable Plugin
>> >
>> > I tend to agree with you. At first the Searchable Plugin seems great,
>> > unfortunately as my application grew in complexity I am having more
>> > and more problems with it. As you say the documentation is lacking.
>> >
>> > I think what should be done with the searchable plugin is favor a
>> > total integration with the underlying Compass technology. In the same
>> > way as Grails: if GORM is not enough for you, you can go one level
>> > down and map with Hibernate. That's great. Same applies for Spring.
>> >
>> > So far I have been able to achieve what I want with Compass, but this
>> > greatly diminishes the interest of the plugin.
>> >
>> > Anyway, the main problem is development time; with more development
>> > time the issues would be resolved.
>> >
>> > Solr, Hibernate Search all look great too and if I encounter too much
>> > problems with Compass/ Searchable I will also switch.
>> >
>> > Jean-Noel
>> >
>> > On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 6:14 PM, Dustin Whitney
>> > <dustin.whitney@...> wrote:
>> >> My team has decided to abandon the searchable plugin in favor of solr
>> >> from
>> >> apache.  I think the searchable plugin has great potential, so I
>> >> thought I'd
>> >> share some constructive criticism to help it along.
>> >>
>> >> The number one problem was the documentation doesn't seem to match up
>> >> with
>> >> the implementation (note that the wiki contains formatting bugs that
>> >> make
>> >> all documentation for grails a bit difficult to read at the moment).
>> >>  This
>> >> made the plugin appear to be really buggy, when it many in fact not be
>> >> buggy
>> >> at all, but I have no way of knowing because I can't get a lot of
>> >> things
>> >> working.  For one, the documentation implies that something simple like
>> >> a
>> >> one-to-one or one-to-many relationship should work out of the box.
>> >>  Like for
>> >> example Book.search("words in a chapter that are in a one-to-many
>> >> relationship") should yield hits, but it does not.  Instead I spent
>> >> several
>> >> hours figuring out how to make that work, and ran into many road blocks
>> >> and
>> >> misdirections that came straight out of the documentation, like for
>> >> example
>> >> "embedded = chapters" isn't correct any more, but it's still there.
>> >>
>> >> The number two reason, and probably the more important reason, is that
>> >> there
>> >> is no support for clustering.  I guess you can store your index in a
>> >> database, but that kinda-sorta, from a performance POV, defeats the
>> >> purpose
>> >> of lucene, doesn't it?  The only solution I could find involved using
>> >> Terracotta and hacking the Grails source code.  There is absolutely no
>> >> way
>> >> I'm going to get buy in if it involves hacking Grails source.  I'd
>> >> imagine
>> >> any site, beyond a hobby site, is going to require some clustering.  It
>> >> needs to be supported out of the box.  Solr does that, so we're
>> >> switching.
>> >>
>> >> That said, the development time involved in the switch to Solr is going
>> >> to
>> >> increase dramatically, and I want to encourage development on the
>> >> searchable
>> >> plugin as I think it's a fantastic addition to the grails suite.
>> >>
>> >> -Dustin
>> >>
>> >
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Graeme Rocher
>> Grails Project Lead
>> G2One, Inc. Chief Technology Officer
>> http://www.g2one.com
>>
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