log4p

While using Compass in the complex environment of our current project we ran into some rather nasty problems; some of the related to bugs in the Compass codebase. Currently we’ve got it all setup and running, and apart from some performance issues (simple queries taking 16 seconds!) it all seems fine.

But since word got out we had troubles the people from JTeam/Interface21 decided to come over and have a meeting/discussion to get to know eachother and to share knowledge.

Bram Smeets (known from Spring and DWR) and Uri Boness (Lucene/Compass expert) turned up. After I introduced them to the applications I (partially) architected for the VPRO we had a nice conversation on the problems we faced using Compass.

As to be expected the typical answers where that they’d seldom seen such a complex and large setup; and they’d probably not use Lucene’s JDBC directory (due to performance). No real answers, but I didn’t expect them; so… no problem. I actually really liked talking to experts on the various frameworks I use; especially since it is a good way to see how I’ve evolved (man, have I evolved ;)) on various topics since last year.

Some tips they gave are worth a try:

• store less information in lucene, keep indexes small and let the database handle it
• experiment with and benchmark various setups (database vs. filestore for example)
• have a look at partitioning to see if it is useful to enhance performance

Always worth a try!