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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LUCENE-710?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#action_12466223
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Michael McCandless commented on LUCENE-710:
-------------------------------------------

One clarification on "different deletion policies": to support "commit
on close" in IndexWriter, I already have to improve IndexFileDeleter
to give it a different deletion policy than the current one.

Specifically, the deleter must not delete anything referenced by the
last commit nor anything referenced by the in-memory SegmentInfos.

For example, if a writer is opened with autoCommit=false ("commit on
close") on an existing index, and lots of docs are added/deleted/etc,
there will have been flushes & merges of segments.  The deletion
policy should not delete anything that existed "at the start" because
it's referenced by the segments_N commit, nor anything that is now
referenced by the in-memory SegmentInfos.  But it should delete
anything "in between" (any newly written segments that have now been
merged away).

To the deleter this would just be a different policy, one that keeps
two SegmentInfos alive (one on disk and one not yet committed, in
memory).  And the default deletion policy would be selected depending
on whether the writer is in autoCommit mode or not.


> Implement "point in time" searching without relying on filesystem semantics
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: LUCENE-710
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LUCENE-710
>             Project: Lucene - Java
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: Index
>    Affects Versions: 2.1
>            Reporter: Michael McCandless
>         Assigned To: Michael McCandless
>            Priority: Minor
>
> This was touched on in recent discussion on dev list:
>   http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/lucene/java-dev/41700#41700
> and then more recently on the user list:
>   http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/lucene/java-user/42088
> Lucene's "point in time" searching currently relies on how the
> underlying storage handles deletion files that are held open for
> reading.
> This is highly variable across filesystems.  For example, UNIX-like
> filesystems usually do "close on last delete", and Windows filesystem
> typically refuses to delete a file open for reading (so Lucene retries
> later).  But NFS just removes the file out from under the reader, and
> for that reason "point in time" searching doesn't work on NFS
> (see LUCENE-673 ).
> With the lockless commits changes (LUCENE-701 ), it's quite simple to
> re-implement "point in time searching" so as to not rely on filesystem
> semantics: we can just keep more than the last segments_N file (as
> well as all files they reference).
> This is also in keeping with the design goal of "rely on as little as
> possible from the filesystem".  EG with lockless we no longer re-use
> filenames (don't rely on filesystem cache being coherent) and we no
> longer use file renaming (because on Windows it can fails).  This
> would be another step of not relying on semantics of "deleting open
> files".  The less we require from filesystem the more portable Lucene
> will be!
> Where it gets interesting is what "policy" we would then use for
> removing segments_N files.  The policy now is "remove all but the last
> one".  I think we would keep this policy as the default.  Then you
> could imagine other policies:
>   * Keep past N day's worth
>   * Keep the last N
>   * Keep only those in active use by a reader somewhere (note: tricky
>     how to reliably figure this out when readers have crashed, etc.)
>   * Keep those "marked" as rollback points by some transaction, or
>     marked explicitly as a "snaphshot".
>   * Or, roll your own: the "policy" would be an interface or abstract
>     class and you could make your own implementation.
> I think for this issue we could just create the framework
> (interface/abstract class for "policy" and invoke it from
> IndexFileDeleter) and then implement the current policy (delete all
> but most recent segments_N) as the default policy.
> In separate issue(s) we could then create the above more interesting
> policies.
> I think there are some important advantages to doing this:
>   * "Point in time" searching would work on NFS (it doesn't now
>     because NFS doesn't do "delete on last close"; see LUCENE-673 )
>     and any other Directory implementations that don't work
>     currently.
>   * Transactional semantics become a possibility: you can set a
>     snapshot, do a bunch of stuff to your index, and then rollback to
>     the snapshot at a later time.
>   * If a reader crashes or machine gets rebooted, etc, it could choose
>     to re-open the snapshot it had previously been using, whereas now
>     the reader must always switch to the last commit point.
>   * Searchers could search the same snapshot for follow-on actions.
>     Meaning, user does search, then next page, drill down (Solr),
>     drill up, etc.  These are each separate trips to the server and if
>     searcher has been re-opened, user can get inconsistent results (=
>     lost trust).  But with, one series of search interactions could
>     explicitly stay on the snapshot it had started with.

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