Apache Solr vs. HP Autonomy Intelligent Universal Search (discontinued)

Very effective for end-user searching applications and for generating search results. Also very well suited to those looking for high reliability and performance. If [you're doing] fuzzy searching or if you are working on a smaller end-user application or an internal application that does not require high performance and flexible/adapting searching then it may not be necessary to use Solr.

Incentivized

It does a decent job at its core functions (that other free software does just as well or better).

• Faceted navigation and field collapsing/grouping : filtering and quick results were what we needed for our websites. Our customers needed to have this functionalities for good and efficient results.
• We tested them with our customers' registered searches (they received all new goods matching with their registered searches by emails and/or mobile push). Results were incredible by comparison with our old system (old MySQL requests).
• Note : we didn't put all our data in Solr. Just what we need for searching uses. Other data stayed in our MySQL database.
• Auto-suggest : our old auto-suggest wasn't performing well. With Apache Solr, our new one was worked really well ! The suggestions came quickly and suggestions were good.
• We also extended auto-suggestion with geo-spatial data and it worked well.
• Hit highlighting : we used this functionality and we didn't have problem and nasty surprise.
• Keep all data status during data upgrading (see next details for improvements)

• It adheres to traditional Microsoft standards such as: fact-dump documentation with no coherent story or 'best practices' information, inability to automate common tasks, intentional obfuscation of its basic operations.
• It provides OK search results. Not great, but OK.

• Ease of use -- this is not always the easier platform to configure.
• Developer Community -- There are not a whole lot of folks out there that understand this stuff so finding talent is difficult.
• Drupal 8 -- We've been frustrated with slow development on APIs for Drupal 8 integration.

Incentivized

• There are about a dozen different config files to maintain, and the most important one is dynamically modified by Autonomy itself while it runs. Which means that it is impossible to automate the configuration or keep the configs in versioned source control. Even `cp *.cfg ~/cfgbak/` won't help you roll back a change, because it is never safe to restore a previous config. You'll be using `diff new.cfg old.cfg` a lot.
• The Linux port is poorly thought out. The binaries are named *.exe. The StartService.sh scripts contain both `echo 'Are you sure you want to start the service? Hit ctrl-C to cancel''; read dummy` and, I kid you not, a `chmod a+x /path/to/my/binary.exe`.
• Many features are poorly documented, leading to lots of back and forth with the support department just to answer basic questions like "what does this error code in my logs signify?"
• It seems to reinvent the wheel, poorly, everywhere. E.g. the scheduled backup feature rolls through a user-defined finite list of directories in which to store backups. On day 0 it uses directory 0, on day 1 it uses directory 1, and after day N it rolls back and overwrites directory 0. Why would this be preferable to using a single directory and naming zip files based on the current timestamp?

Management wants to see ROI on the (hefty) cost of purchasing this software, and has mandated that we continue using it. We would prefer to switch immediately.

It takes some time to deploy and currectly maintein it. And also, to learn how to use and integrate in the enviroment as well. Once you get theses steps done, it usability is very simple, and almost of the time it don't require no further attention on it. Even for maintence, if you deploy it on a cluster mode, it is very reliable and easy to take one host down.

Incentivized

We switched from search indexes stored in MySQL to soar and it's made a world of difference for our growing businesses. The relational databases are very poor for handling the complex data searches require and Solr delivered all the tools we need to get the performance our end users are demanding.

Incentivized

• It's enabled us to deliver fast, relevant search results on our new website. The site is still in beta and being actively developed so our complete ROI is still unknown.
• It integrates very well with Drupal so it has saved us from having to develop a custom solution.

Incentivized

• I have learned to tack a zero onto the end of any estimate I make for how long an Autonomy change will take in both planning and implementation.