I know a person using it in production today. It's causing problems. They could abandon Solr altogether. It seems like a schema creation wizard is the right getting started motion if we know that schemaless doesn't do what people think it does. It's misleading. It's also a false representation of how easy it is to get started when compared to other solutions on the market. If schemaless is about support new use/adoption, it should actually help that more than hurt it.
That's why I raised it. Re-branding this feature is like pig-lipsticking in my mind, but you all have more experience than me and are committers. I will defer to you for now. I am in favor on re-naming the feature as the minimum change that should happen. Schemaless mode makes sense in a world where schemas are largely opaque like IoT-telemetry or server logs. When you are searching data primarily for human consumption, I think it is just a headache in a bottle. In the cases of CSV and TSV, customers know the schema. I like to approach designing software such that no one ever needs to talk to me. No firefighting consulting is necessary, and you can skim the docs and proceed safely. I understand others may not feel that way, but it is the future of software. I encourage everyone here to try the newer search systems that have been released and are growing rapidly to inform your opinions on this topic. I am doing that because it is the concrete poured to build the common ground of the future. On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 11:40 AM Anshum Gupta <[email protected]> wrote: > +1 Jason. > > Here's some context on how this came into being. > > Users find it difficult to understand and create a basic schema when just > trying out Solr. This mode was supposed to help them bootstrap, and one > they had a better understanding of how things worked, they'd tune it before > using the schema in production. > This did improve the OTB experience for new users, but a lot of people > abused this convenience and used this in production causing issues. > > As Jason mentioned, we'd better serve our users if we left this feature > for the getting started experience and add warnings (in UI and responses?) > so users would know what they are doing when they take this to production. > > This feature isn't trappy unless people use it in ways it was not intended > to be used in. We just need to warn and educate people better. > > On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 10:41 AM Jason Gerlowski <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> > Is anyone on this list using schemaless mode in production or have you >> tried to? >> >> Schemaless mode is one of a group of Solr features present for >> convenience but not intended for production usage. It's in the same >> boat as "bin/post", and SolrCell, and others. These features do cause >> headaches when users ignore the documented restrictions and use them >> for more than prototyping. But at the same time they're super >> valuable for these sort of demo-ing or getting-started use cases. An >> easy getting-started experience is important, and schemaless et al >> serve a mostly positive role in that. >> >> I think we'd better serve our users if we left schemaless >> in/undeprecated, and instead focused on making it harder to >> (unknowingly) use them in ways contrary to community recommendations. >> Add louder warnings in the documentation (where not already present). >> Add warnings to the Solr logs the first time these features are used. >> Disable them by default (where that makes sense). Taken to the >> extreme, we could even add a section into Solr's response that lists >> non-production features used in serving a given request. >> >> There are lots of ways to address the "feature X is trappy" problem >> without removing X together. >> >> On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 11:33 AM Marcus Eagan <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> > >> > Community, >> > >> > There are many of us that have had to deal with the pain of managing >> the schemaless mode of operation in Solr. I'm curious to get others >> thoughts about how well it is working for them and if they would like to >> continue to use it. >> > >> > I for one don't think Schemaless works as intended and favor >> deprecating it and replacing it with some more usable but I am sure others >> have thoughts here. >> > >> > Is anyone on this list using schemaless mode in production or have you >> tried to? >> > >> > A preliminary discussion has occurred in this Jira ticket: >> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SOLR-14701 >> > >> > Thank you all, >> > >> > Marcus Eagan >> > >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] >> For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] >> >> > > -- > Anshum Gupta > -- Marcus Eagan
