Solr Vs. Lucene – Which Full Text Search Solution Should You Use?

A full text search solution is a data query and retrieval technique used to search through digital documents and databases.  It is faster and more powerful than regular search methods, allowing searches to use effective queries to find content across multiple data types.

The two most common full text search solutions use the technologies Solr or Lucene.  However, there is some confusion regarding the difference and the advantages of each solution.  Thus, it is unclear when Solr or Lucene should be used as a full text solution in a given situation.

The main difference between Solr and Lucene is that Lucene is a library while Solr is an open-source enterprise search platform that uses the Lucene library.  Solr is an HTTP wrapper for Lucene that adds XML/HTTP and JSON APIs and gives it several useful features, such as hit highlighting, faceted search, caching, replication, and a web administration interface.  Using Solr involves indexing documents using XML, JSON, or binary over HTTP.  Content from these documents are retrieved using an HTTP GET query.Solr is written in java and runs as a standalone full-text search server within a servlet container, such as Tomcat.

Solr uses the Lucene search library and extends it with a set of robust features.  Since Solr is a platform that uses the Lucene library, the only time it may be preferable to use Lucene is if you want to embed search functionality into your own application.  Otherwise, Solr has a number of advanced full-text search capabilities:
Hit Highlighting – Shows a snippet of a document in the search results that surrounds the search terms.

Monitorable Logging – Tracks searches and search results by time and users

Faceted Search – Dynamically clusters search results into drill-down categories

Built-in Sorting – Automatic features to sort search results by a variety of characteristics

Web Admin Interface – Allows setting the various requested parameters through a query form

HTTP query – Pass a number of optional request parameters to the request handler to control what information is returned.

Data Pulling via Database and File Storage – Allows for faster, more comprehensive searches on a large volume of data

External XML Configuration –Solr is flexible and adaptable using XML configuration

You can learn more about Solr here:  http://lucene.apache.org/solr/features.html
For organizations already using Lucene as their full-text search solution, it is not difficult to upgrade to Solr since it is an extension of the Lucene library.  Solr is completely configurable, so you can benefit from the robust functionality of the platform.

There is a third option for organizations that prefer to use Microsoft technologies.  Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL) is a relational database server that stores and retrieves data from other software applications on the same computer or network.  Like Solr, MS SQL indexes electronic documents and stores the content on searchable SQL databases. 
You can learn more about MS SQL here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlserverfaq/archive/2011/05/04
/presentation-material-for-webcast-on-sql-server-full-text-search.aspx