Re: Index time boosts, payloads, and long query strings
Thanks Erick! After reading your answer, and re-reading the Solr wiki, I realized my folly. I used to think that index-time boosts when applied on a per-field basis are equivalent to query time boosts to that field. To ensure that my new understanding is correct , I'll state it in my words. Index time boosts will determine boost for a *document* if it is counted as a hit. Query time boosts give you control on boosting the occurrence of a query in a specific field. Please correct me if I'm wrong (again) :-) Girish Redekar http://girishredekar.net On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 8:25 PM, Erick Erickson erickerick...@gmail.comwrote: I still think they are apples and oranges. If you boost *all* titles, you're effectively boosting none of them. Index time boosting expresses this document's title is more important than other document titles. What I think you're after is titles are more important than other parts of the document. For this latter, you're talking query-time boosting. Boosting only really makes sense if there are multiple clauses, something like title:important OR body:unimportant. If this is true, speed is irrelevant, you need correct behavior. Not that I think you'd notice either way. Modern computers can do a LOT of FLOPS/sec. Here's an experiment: time some queries (but beware of timing the very first ones, see the Wiki) with boosts and without boosts. I doubt you'll see enough difference to matter (but please do report back if you do, it'll further my education G). But, depending on your index structure, you may get this anyway. Generally, matches on shorter fields weigh more in the score calculations than on longer fields. If you have fields like title and body and you are querying on title:term OR body:term, documents with term in the title will tend toward higher scores. But before putting too much effort into this, do you have any evidence that the default behavior is unsatisfactory? Because unless and until you do, I think this is a distraction G... Best Erick On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 8:37 AM, Girish Redekar girish.rede...@aplopio.comwrote: Hi Erick - Maybe I mis-wrote. My question is: would title:any_query^4.0 be faster/slower than applying index time boost to the field title. Basically, if I take *every* user query and search for it in title with boost (say, 4.0) - is it different than saying field title has boost 4.0? Cheers, Girish Redekar http://girishredekar.net On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 2:02 AM, Erick Erickson erickerick...@gmail.com wrote: I'll take a whack at index .vs. query boosting. They are expressing very different concepts. Let's claim we're interested in boosting the title field Index time boosting is expressing this document's title is X more important than a normal document title. It doesn't matter *what* the title is, any query that matches on anything in this document's title will give this document a boost. I might use this to give preferential treatment to all encyclopedia entries or something. Query time boosting, like title:solr^4.0 expresses Any document with solr in it's title is more important than documents without solr in the title. This really only makes sense if you have other clauses that might cause a document *without* solr the title to match.. Since they are doing different things, efficiency isn't really relevant. HTH Erick On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 2:13 AM, Girish Redekar girish.rede...@aplopio.comwrote: Hi , I'm relatively new to Solr/Lucene, and am using Solr (and not lucene directly) primarily because I can use it without writing java code (rest of my project is python coded). My application has the following requirements: (a) ability to search over multiple fields, each with different weight (b) If possible, I'd like to have the ability to add extra/diminished weights to particular tokens within a field (c) My query strings have large lengths (50-100 words) (d) My index is 500K+ documents 1) The way to (a) is field boosting (right?). My question is: Is all field boosting done at query time? Even if I give index time boosts to fields? Is there a performance advantage in boosting fields at index time vs at using something like fieldname:querystring^boost. 2) From what I've read, it seems that I can do (b) using payloads. However, as this link ( http://www.lucidimagination.com/blog/2009/08/05/getting-started-with-payloads/ ) suggests, I will have to write a payload aware Query Parser. Wanted to confirm if this is indeed the case - or is there a out-of-box way to implement payloads (am using Solr1.4) 3) For my project, the user fills multiple text boxes (for each query). I combine these into a single query (with different treatment for contents
Re: Index time boosts, payloads, and long query strings
Yep G On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 4:13 AM, Girish Redekar girish.rede...@aplopio.comwrote: Thanks Erick! After reading your answer, and re-reading the Solr wiki, I realized my folly. I used to think that index-time boosts when applied on a per-field basis are equivalent to query time boosts to that field. To ensure that my new understanding is correct , I'll state it in my words. Index time boosts will determine boost for a *document* if it is counted as a hit. Query time boosts give you control on boosting the occurrence of a query in a specific field. Please correct me if I'm wrong (again) :-) Girish Redekar http://girishredekar.net On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 8:25 PM, Erick Erickson erickerick...@gmail.com wrote: I still think they are apples and oranges. If you boost *all* titles, you're effectively boosting none of them. Index time boosting expresses this document's title is more important than other document titles. What I think you're after is titles are more important than other parts of the document. For this latter, you're talking query-time boosting. Boosting only really makes sense if there are multiple clauses, something like title:important OR body:unimportant. If this is true, speed is irrelevant, you need correct behavior. Not that I think you'd notice either way. Modern computers can do a LOT of FLOPS/sec. Here's an experiment: time some queries (but beware of timing the very first ones, see the Wiki) with boosts and without boosts. I doubt you'll see enough difference to matter (but please do report back if you do, it'll further my education G). But, depending on your index structure, you may get this anyway. Generally, matches on shorter fields weigh more in the score calculations than on longer fields. If you have fields like title and body and you are querying on title:term OR body:term, documents with term in the title will tend toward higher scores. But before putting too much effort into this, do you have any evidence that the default behavior is unsatisfactory? Because unless and until you do, I think this is a distraction G... Best Erick On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 8:37 AM, Girish Redekar girish.rede...@aplopio.comwrote: Hi Erick - Maybe I mis-wrote. My question is: would title:any_query^4.0 be faster/slower than applying index time boost to the field title. Basically, if I take *every* user query and search for it in title with boost (say, 4.0) - is it different than saying field title has boost 4.0? Cheers, Girish Redekar http://girishredekar.net On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 2:02 AM, Erick Erickson erickerick...@gmail.com wrote: I'll take a whack at index .vs. query boosting. They are expressing very different concepts. Let's claim we're interested in boosting the title field Index time boosting is expressing this document's title is X more important than a normal document title. It doesn't matter *what* the title is, any query that matches on anything in this document's title will give this document a boost. I might use this to give preferential treatment to all encyclopedia entries or something. Query time boosting, like title:solr^4.0 expresses Any document with solr in it's title is more important than documents without solr in the title. This really only makes sense if you have other clauses that might cause a document *without* solr the title to match.. Since they are doing different things, efficiency isn't really relevant. HTH Erick On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 2:13 AM, Girish Redekar girish.rede...@aplopio.comwrote: Hi , I'm relatively new to Solr/Lucene, and am using Solr (and not lucene directly) primarily because I can use it without writing java code (rest of my project is python coded). My application has the following requirements: (a) ability to search over multiple fields, each with different weight (b) If possible, I'd like to have the ability to add extra/diminished weights to particular tokens within a field (c) My query strings have large lengths (50-100 words) (d) My index is 500K+ documents 1) The way to (a) is field boosting (right?). My question is: Is all field boosting done at query time? Even if I give index time boosts to fields? Is there a performance advantage in boosting fields at index time vs at using something like fieldname:querystring^boost. 2) From what I've read, it seems that I can do (b) using payloads. However, as this link ( http://www.lucidimagination.com/blog/2009/08/05/getting-started-with-payloads/ ) suggests, I will have to write a payload aware Query Parser. Wanted to confirm if this is indeed
Re: Index time boosts, payloads, and long query strings
Hi Erick - Maybe I mis-wrote. My question is: would title:any_query^4.0 be faster/slower than applying index time boost to the field title. Basically, if I take *every* user query and search for it in title with boost (say, 4.0) - is it different than saying field title has boost 4.0? Cheers, Girish Redekar http://girishredekar.net On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 2:02 AM, Erick Erickson erickerick...@gmail.comwrote: I'll take a whack at index .vs. query boosting. They are expressing very different concepts. Let's claim we're interested in boosting the title field Index time boosting is expressing this document's title is X more important than a normal document title. It doesn't matter *what* the title is, any query that matches on anything in this document's title will give this document a boost. I might use this to give preferential treatment to all encyclopedia entries or something. Query time boosting, like title:solr^4.0 expresses Any document with solr in it's title is more important than documents without solr in the title. This really only makes sense if you have other clauses that might cause a document *without* solr the title to match.. Since they are doing different things, efficiency isn't really relevant. HTH Erick On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 2:13 AM, Girish Redekar girish.rede...@aplopio.comwrote: Hi , I'm relatively new to Solr/Lucene, and am using Solr (and not lucene directly) primarily because I can use it without writing java code (rest of my project is python coded). My application has the following requirements: (a) ability to search over multiple fields, each with different weight (b) If possible, I'd like to have the ability to add extra/diminished weights to particular tokens within a field (c) My query strings have large lengths (50-100 words) (d) My index is 500K+ documents 1) The way to (a) is field boosting (right?). My question is: Is all field boosting done at query time? Even if I give index time boosts to fields? Is there a performance advantage in boosting fields at index time vs at using something like fieldname:querystring^boost. 2) From what I've read, it seems that I can do (b) using payloads. However, as this link ( http://www.lucidimagination.com/blog/2009/08/05/getting-started-with-payloads/ ) suggests, I will have to write a payload aware Query Parser. Wanted to confirm if this is indeed the case - or is there a out-of-box way to implement payloads (am using Solr1.4) 3) For my project, the user fills multiple text boxes (for each query). I combine these into a single query (with different treatment for contents of each text box). Consequently, my query looks something like (fieldname1: queryterm1 queryterm2^2.0 queryterm3^3.0 +queryterm4)^1.0 Are there any guidelines for improving performance of such a system (sorry, this bit is vague) Any help with this will be great ! Girish Redekar http://girishredekar.net
Re: Index time boosts, payloads, and long query strings
I still think they are apples and oranges. If you boost *all* titles, you're effectively boosting none of them. Index time boosting expresses this document's title is more important than other document titles. What I think you're after is titles are more important than other parts of the document. For this latter, you're talking query-time boosting. Boosting only really makes sense if there are multiple clauses, something like title:important OR body:unimportant. If this is true, speed is irrelevant, you need correct behavior. Not that I think you'd notice either way. Modern computers can do a LOT of FLOPS/sec. Here's an experiment: time some queries (but beware of timing the very first ones, see the Wiki) with boosts and without boosts. I doubt you'll see enough difference to matter (but please do report back if you do, it'll further my education G). But, depending on your index structure, you may get this anyway. Generally, matches on shorter fields weigh more in the score calculations than on longer fields. If you have fields like title and body and you are querying on title:term OR body:term, documents with term in the title will tend toward higher scores. But before putting too much effort into this, do you have any evidence that the default behavior is unsatisfactory? Because unless and until you do, I think this is a distraction G... Best Erick On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 8:37 AM, Girish Redekar girish.rede...@aplopio.comwrote: Hi Erick - Maybe I mis-wrote. My question is: would title:any_query^4.0 be faster/slower than applying index time boost to the field title. Basically, if I take *every* user query and search for it in title with boost (say, 4.0) - is it different than saying field title has boost 4.0? Cheers, Girish Redekar http://girishredekar.net On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 2:02 AM, Erick Erickson erickerick...@gmail.com wrote: I'll take a whack at index .vs. query boosting. They are expressing very different concepts. Let's claim we're interested in boosting the title field Index time boosting is expressing this document's title is X more important than a normal document title. It doesn't matter *what* the title is, any query that matches on anything in this document's title will give this document a boost. I might use this to give preferential treatment to all encyclopedia entries or something. Query time boosting, like title:solr^4.0 expresses Any document with solr in it's title is more important than documents without solr in the title. This really only makes sense if you have other clauses that might cause a document *without* solr the title to match.. Since they are doing different things, efficiency isn't really relevant. HTH Erick On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 2:13 AM, Girish Redekar girish.rede...@aplopio.comwrote: Hi , I'm relatively new to Solr/Lucene, and am using Solr (and not lucene directly) primarily because I can use it without writing java code (rest of my project is python coded). My application has the following requirements: (a) ability to search over multiple fields, each with different weight (b) If possible, I'd like to have the ability to add extra/diminished weights to particular tokens within a field (c) My query strings have large lengths (50-100 words) (d) My index is 500K+ documents 1) The way to (a) is field boosting (right?). My question is: Is all field boosting done at query time? Even if I give index time boosts to fields? Is there a performance advantage in boosting fields at index time vs at using something like fieldname:querystring^boost. 2) From what I've read, it seems that I can do (b) using payloads. However, as this link ( http://www.lucidimagination.com/blog/2009/08/05/getting-started-with-payloads/ ) suggests, I will have to write a payload aware Query Parser. Wanted to confirm if this is indeed the case - or is there a out-of-box way to implement payloads (am using Solr1.4) 3) For my project, the user fills multiple text boxes (for each query). I combine these into a single query (with different treatment for contents of each text box). Consequently, my query looks something like (fieldname1: queryterm1 queryterm2^2.0 queryterm3^3.0 +queryterm4)^1.0 Are there any guidelines for improving performance of such a system (sorry, this bit is vague) Any help with this will be great ! Girish Redekar http://girishredekar.net
Re: Index time boosts, payloads, and long query strings
I'll take a whack at index .vs. query boosting. They are expressing very different concepts. Let's claim we're interested in boosting the title field Index time boosting is expressing this document's title is X more important than a normal document title. It doesn't matter *what* the title is, any query that matches on anything in this document's title will give this document a boost. I might use this to give preferential treatment to all encyclopedia entries or something. Query time boosting, like title:solr^4.0 expresses Any document with solr in it's title is more important than documents without solr in the title. This really only makes sense if you have other clauses that might cause a document *without* solr the title to match.. Since they are doing different things, efficiency isn't really relevant. HTH Erick On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 2:13 AM, Girish Redekar girish.rede...@aplopio.comwrote: Hi , I'm relatively new to Solr/Lucene, and am using Solr (and not lucene directly) primarily because I can use it without writing java code (rest of my project is python coded). My application has the following requirements: (a) ability to search over multiple fields, each with different weight (b) If possible, I'd like to have the ability to add extra/diminished weights to particular tokens within a field (c) My query strings have large lengths (50-100 words) (d) My index is 500K+ documents 1) The way to (a) is field boosting (right?). My question is: Is all field boosting done at query time? Even if I give index time boosts to fields? Is there a performance advantage in boosting fields at index time vs at using something like fieldname:querystring^boost. 2) From what I've read, it seems that I can do (b) using payloads. However, as this link ( http://www.lucidimagination.com/blog/2009/08/05/getting-started-with-payloads/ ) suggests, I will have to write a payload aware Query Parser. Wanted to confirm if this is indeed the case - or is there a out-of-box way to implement payloads (am using Solr1.4) 3) For my project, the user fills multiple text boxes (for each query). I combine these into a single query (with different treatment for contents of each text box). Consequently, my query looks something like (fieldname1: queryterm1 queryterm2^2.0 queryterm3^3.0 +queryterm4)^1.0 Are there any guidelines for improving performance of such a system (sorry, this bit is vague) Any help with this will be great ! Girish Redekar http://girishredekar.net
Index time boosts, payloads, and long query strings
Hi , I'm relatively new to Solr/Lucene, and am using Solr (and not lucene directly) primarily because I can use it without writing java code (rest of my project is python coded). My application has the following requirements: (a) ability to search over multiple fields, each with different weight (b) If possible, I'd like to have the ability to add extra/diminished weights to particular tokens within a field (c) My query strings have large lengths (50-100 words) (d) My index is 500K+ documents 1) The way to (a) is field boosting (right?). My question is: Is all field boosting done at query time? Even if I give index time boosts to fields? Is there a performance advantage in boosting fields at index time vs at using something like fieldname:querystring^boost. 2) From what I've read, it seems that I can do (b) using payloads. However, as this link ( http://www.lucidimagination.com/blog/2009/08/05/getting-started-with-payloads/) suggests, I will have to write a payload aware Query Parser. Wanted to confirm if this is indeed the case - or is there a out-of-box way to implement payloads (am using Solr1.4) 3) For my project, the user fills multiple text boxes (for each query). I combine these into a single query (with different treatment for contents of each text box). Consequently, my query looks something like (fieldname1: queryterm1 queryterm2^2.0 queryterm3^3.0 +queryterm4)^1.0 Are there any guidelines for improving performance of such a system (sorry, this bit is vague) Any help with this will be great ! Girish Redekar http://girishredekar.net
