In many e-commerce sites, most of data that we display (except images) especially in grids and lists is minimal. We were inclined to use Solr as data store for only displaying the information in grids. We stopped only due to non-availability of joins in Solr3.5. Since, our data (like any other relational store) is split in multiple tables, we needed to de-normalize to use solr as a store. We decided against it because that would mean potentially heavy updates to indexes whenever related data is updated. With Solr 4.0, we might have decided differently and implement the grids using joins within solr.
We are too new to Solr to have any insights into it. Regards, Sohail
