> The q.alt param specifies only the parameter to use if the q parameter is > missing. Could you verify whether that is really the case? Typically > solrconfig gives a default of "*:*" for the q parameter. Specifying a > query > via the q.alt parameter seems like a strange approach - what is your > rationale?
As the author of a book about Solr, I'm sure you already know these things. For everyone else: The qt parameter only gets used if the handleSelect value on the request dispatcher configuration is true. When that is set, it chooses a request handler by name. This configuration value defaults to false since version 3.6, so that you can't use the /select handler to do other things, like /update. The q.alt parameter is applicable only to the dismax and edismax query parsers, and specifies the query to send to the standard query parser if the q parameter is blank or missing. It's most often defined as *:* to get all docs. The *:* value doesn't have any special meaning to the dismax parser. Thanks, Shawn
