From Java to Python: Migrating Search Functionality at billiger.de

The search on our price comparison site billiger.de is implemented using Solr and half a dozen custom SolrComponents. When switching from Solr to SolrCloud earlier this year, we had to go over all our custom components in order to make them cluster-ready. What we ended up doing instead was re-implementing the custom functionality in a Python service layer that in turn uses stock SolrCloud. This talk describes our journey, shows some code and advocates hiding implementation details like Solr v. SolrCloud behind a service layer. Ported functionality includes boosting more successful documents, identifying brands and categories in queries, "minimum match" search and facet ranking and alternatives.