: : I have a requirement where I need to display records with more recent values : for approval_dt to come first when a query is made. I thought of approaching : this in 2 different ways:-
... : 2. INDEX-TIME boosting. : I sorted the query from databse itself in asc order of approval_dt while : creating my input xml and while creating each *<doc>* gave it a boost : increment by 0.1 starting from 1.01. Those records which don't have a value index time boosts are folded info the fieldNorm which is float indexed using a compressed "buyte" incoding, so many initial values all collapse down to the same final value -- which means you aren't going to get the granulatiry you want from index time booksts like 1.01 and 1.02 even if you do every thing else perfectly. if you have the luxary of sorting your docs before indexing them, then you should sort them by approval_dt *descending* and then iterate over them and add them to the index. then you can use the new "_docid_ asc" sort syntax added in Solr 1.4 Ascending sord by internal docid (ie: the order that documents are indexed) is essentially free in Lucene/Solr -- so you should find that much faster then sorting by an explicit field (or even sorting by score) -Hoss