Container (e.g., Tomcat) limit. Configurable. I don’t recall the specifics.

-- Jack Krupansky

From: Shai Erera 
Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2013 9:46 AM
To: [email protected] 
Subject: Re: Programmatic Synonyms Filter (Lucene and/or Solr)

Actually, after chatting w/ Mike about it, he made a good point about making 
SynMap expose API like lookup(word), because that doesn't work with multi-word 
synonyms (e.g. "wi fi" -> "wifi"). So I no longer think we should change 
SynFilter. Since in my case it's 1:1 (so much I learned so far), I should write 
my own TokenFilter.


So now the question is whether to do it at indexing time or search time. Each 
has pros and cons. I'll need to learn more about the DB first, e.g. how many 
words have only tens of synonyms and how many thousands. I suspect there's no 
single solution here, so will need to experiment with both.


Jack, I didn't quite follow the 2048 common limit -- is it a Solr limit of some 
sort? If so, can you please elaborate?

Shai




On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 4:12 PM, Jack Krupansky <[email protected]> wrote:

  Maybe a custom search component would be in order, to “enrich” the incoming 
query. Again, preprocessing the query for synonym expansion before Solr parses 
it. It could call the external synonym API and cache synonyms as well.

  But, I’d still lean towards preprocessing in an application layer. Although, 
for hundreds or thousands of synonyms it would probably hit the 2048 common 
limit for URLs in some containers, which would need to be raised.

  -- Jack Krupansky

  From: Shai Erera 
  Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2013 8:54 AM
  To: [email protected] 
  Subject: Re: Programmatic Synonyms Filter (Lucene and/or Solr)

  The examples I've seen so far are single words. But I learned today something 
new .. the number of "synonyms" returned for a word may be in the range of 
hundreds, sometimes even thousands.

  So I'm not sure query-time synonyms may work at all .. what do you think?

  Shai




  On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 3:21 PM, Jack Krupansky <[email protected]> 
wrote:

    Your best bet is to preprocess queries and expand synonyms in your own 
application layer. The Lucene/Solr synonym implementation, design, and 
architecture is fairly lightweight (although FST is a big improvement) and not 
architected for large and dynamic synonym sets.

    Do you need multi-word phrase synonyms as well, or is this strictly 
single-word synonyms?

    -- Jack Krupansky

    From: Shai Erera 
    Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2013 1:36 AM
    To: [email protected] 
    Subject: Programmatic Synonyms Filter (Lucene and/or Solr)

    Hi


    I was asked to integrate with a system which provides synonyms for words 
through API. I checked the existing synonym filters in Lucene and Solr and they 
all seem to take a synonyms map up front. 

    E.g. Lucene's SynonymFilter takes a SynonymMap which exposes an FST, so 
it's not really programmatic in the sense that I can provide an impl which will 
pull the synonyms through the other system's API.


    Solr SynonymFilterFactory just loads the synonyms from a file into a 
SynonymMap, and then uses Lucene's SynonymFilter, so it doesn't look like I can 
extend that one either.


    The problem is that the synonyms DB I should integrate with is HUGE and 
will probably not fit in RAM (SynonymMap). Nor is it currently possible to pull 
all available synonyms from it in one go. The API I have is something like 
String[] getSynonyms(String word).


    So I have few questions:


    1) Did I miss a Filter which does take a programmatic syn-map which I can 
provide my own impl to?


    2) If not, Would it make sense to modify SynonymMap to offer 
getSynonyms(word) API (using BytesRef / CharsRef of course), with an 
FSTSynonymMap default impl so that users can provide their own impl, e.g. not 
requiring everything to be in RAM?


    2.1) Side-effect benefit, I think, is that we won't require everyone to 
deal with the FST API that way, though I'll admit I cannot think of may use 
cases for not using SynonymFilter as-is ...


    3) If the answer to (1) and (2) is NO, I guess my only option is to 
implement my own SynonymFilter, copying most of the code from Lucene's ... 
right?

    Shai


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