On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 1:05 PM, Thomas Mortagne
<[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 11:55 AM, Marius Dumitru Florea
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Hi devs,
>>
>> This is a very important question so think carefully. Let me explain:
>>
>> In XWiki (model) we have a few entity types. There are *wikis* which
>> have *spaces* which have *documents*. A document can have *objects*
>> and *attachments*. A document can also define a *class*.
>>
>> At the same time we like to say that in XWiki "everything is a
>> document" because everything revolves around documents. The document
>> is the central notion.
>>
>> We can query the database (using HQL or XWQL) for any of the
>> previously mentioned entities but what should a Solr query return
>> (semantically)? In other words:
>>
>> * are you searching for an object without caring about the document
>> that holds the object? Same for an object property.
>> * how often are you searching for an attachment without caring about
>> the document that holds the attachment?
>> * are you searching for a class or for the document that defines that class?
>> * are you searching for a wiki without caring about the documents it
>> contains? Same for a space.
>>
>> IMO the result of a Solr query should be, semantically, a list of
>> documents. But maybe I'm wrong.
>>
>> -----------------------
>> Technical Details
>> -----------------------
>>
>> Unlike a relational database, Solr/Lucene index has a single 'table'.
>> So normally you index a single entity type. Each row in the index
>> represents an entity of that type. As a consequence the result of a
>> Solr query is semantically a list of entities of that type. In our
>> case the entity type is (naturally) *document*.
>>
>> If you want to index more entity types (e.g. index attachments and
>> objects _separately_, not as part of a document) then, since there is
>> only one 'table' in the index, you need to add a 'type' column that
>> specifies the type of entity you have on each row (e.g. type=document,
>> type=attachment, type=object etc.). The result of a Solr query is now,
>> semantically, a list of different entity types, unless you filter by a
>> specific type. It smells like a hack to me.
>>
>> Let's imagine what happens if we want to search for blog posts that
>> has a specific tag. With the first approach this is easy because all
>> the (indexed) information is on a single row. With the second approach
>> this is considerably more complex because the information is spread on
>> multiple rows:
>>
>> * one row with type=document for the blog post document
>> * one row with type=object for the blog post object
>> * one row with type=object for the tab object
>>
>> In a relational database when you have the information spread in
>> multiple places (tables) you do joins. Fortunately (you would says)
>> Solr supports joins. In this particular case we would have to perform
>> 2 joins which means:
>>
>> index X index X index
>>
>> where X represents the cartesian product. The document name would be
>> the join key. Pretty complex even before trying to write this in Solr
>> query syntax..
>>
>> So basically the question becomes: is it worth indexing more entities
>> _separately_ instead of indexing just documents (with info about their
>> objects and attachments) considering the complexity that it brings in
>> writing Solr queries? Do we search for objects and attachments alone
>> as separate entities often enough to justify this complexity? My
>> answer is no.
>

> Sounds good in theory but storing several entities in the same entry
> has complexity of it's own that needs to be discussed before deciding.

I agree.

>
> How do you plan to store several tag objects of the same document in a
> single document entry for example ?

I haven't thought very much but I was thinking about using
multiValued="true" maybe in combination with dynamic fields. I need to
think about this.

Thanks,
Marius

>
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Marius
>> _______________________________________________
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>> [email protected]
>> http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
>
>
>
> --
> Thomas Mortagne
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