Lucid Imagination Streamlines Apache Solr for Enterprise Search Applications

SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwire - January 7, 2010) - Lucid Imagination, a commercial company dedicated to supporting open source Apache Lucene and Apache Solr search technologies, today announced the immediate availability of its LucidWorks Certified Distribution for Solr 1.4. The new release makes it simpler for enterprise search application developers to build search applications right away with Solr, the Lucene search server. It includes the industry's first free, definitive Solr 1.4 reference guide, a new installation wizard, and automated update service.

The free technology is part of the company's focus on providing value-add software and services to the Lucene/Solr marketplace and user community. LucidWorks Certified Distribution for Solr 1.4 is a fully tested version of the latest Solr release. Search developers get all of the key innovations of Solr 1.4, such as parsing of native office document formats and highly scalable Java-based replication and deployment, but in a release that greatly reduces the time and effort of building innovative search applications.

Twitter summary: Certified Solr distribution from @LucidImagineer includes free reference guide and installer; great for new #Solr developers bit.ly/solr14

"Getting the right information to the right people quickly has becomes a critical goal for more and more businesses. This new free certified distribution of Solr furthers our mission to make the superior enterprise search technology of Apache Lucene and Solr more accessible to a broader marketplace," said Eric Gries, CEO of Lucid Imagination. "It unleashes the power and versatility of Apache Lucene/Solr, both for the 4,000 companies already using it, and for all those seeking productive, cost-effective alternatives to expensive, proprietary search technologies."

Solr 1.4 Reference Guide

Developed by the Lucene/Solr committers and enterprise search experts at Lucid Imagination, the new LucidWorks Certified Distribution offers a definitive reference guide for Solr 1.4, downloadable free and fully searchable online. It organizes and unifies key information on all important features and functions of Solr. New Solr developers and experienced developers alike no longer have to trawl through wikis and email forums for information on features or debugging problems. It includes comprehensive information in a range of areas:

-- Documents, Fields, and Schema Design: how Solr organizes its data for indexing, explaining Solr schema

-- Understanding Analyzers, Tokenizers, and Filters: how Solr processes text to best ready it for fast indexing and efficient searching

-- The Well Configured Solr Instance: performance tuning for Solr, how to configure multiple Solr Cores, the Lucene index writer, and more

-- Managing Solr: important topics for running and monitoring Solr, such as running Solr in Apache Tomcat, running multiple Solr instances, and LucidGaze, Lucid Imagination's tool for statistical reporting about Solr performance

-- Scaling and Distribution: growing a Solr distribution by dividing a large index into sections distributed across multiple servers, or replicating a single index

The Solr 1.4 Reference Guide can be downloaded at no charge from http://www.lucidimagination.com/Downloads/LucidWorks-for-Solr/reference-guide, and is also available bundled as part of the LucidWorks Certified Distribution for Solr 1.4. It is also fully searchable online at Lucid's innovative community knowledge Solr-based search portal, http://search.lucidimagination.com.

Solr Installer for Better Search Application Development Productivity

The new installer in LucidWorks Certified Distribution for Solr 1.4 reduces the time needed for set up and configuration by guiding users through the process. The installer minimizes the complexities often associated with deploying web services applications, simplifying the out-of-box experience for Solr to a few clicks of the "Next" button. The installer also allows developers to pick and choose the appropriate plug-ins based on their specific deployment needs. In addition to improving the ease of use, the installer integrates an automated update service for components such as source code, contributed modules, LucidGaze performance utilities and the reference guide for convenient retrieval, installation and deployment from within the installer wizard.

As with all Lucid Imagination Certified Distributions, this release provides users with a stable and reliable foundation for building their Lucene-based search applications and comes with a free 30-day Get Started assistance program for search application developers. LucidWorks Certified Distribution for Solr also includes Luke, a handy development and diagnostic tool that allows developers to examine and modify existing Lucene indexes, and quickly identify issues in data feed, search accuracy and search relevancy. Lucid Imagination also offers various SLA-based enterprise-grade support subscriptions and services to help users throughout the application lifecycle.

LucidWorks for Solr Certified Distribution is available free at http://www.lucidimagination.com/Downloads/LucidWorks-for-Solr/reference-guide. Other complimentary downloads, including LucidWorks Certified Distributions for Lucene, and a reference guide for Solr 1.3, are available at http://www.lucidimagination.com/Downloads/.

About Lucid Imagination

Lucid Imagination is a commercial company dedicated to Apache Lucene technology. The company provides free certified distributions, documentation, commercial-grade support, training, high-level consulting and value-added software for Lucene and Solr. Lucid Imagination's goal is to serve as a central resource for the entire Lucene community and marketplace, to make enterprise search application developers more productive. Customers include Apple, AT&T Interactive, Comcast, The Motley Fool, Zappos and many more household names. Lucid Imagination is a privately held venture-funded company. The investors include Granite Ventures, Walden International and In-Q-Tel.

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