How do you use wildcards in search?

How do I use Solr for Search only instead of SQL Server while using RDBMS for write?

• We use SQL Server currently.We are thinking about using technologies like Solr to speed up our search into the RDBMS-hopefully by flattening the RDBMS data into a denormalized data structure and indexed for the various queries performed by our users.This causes a mismatch between read-only search and subsequent write operation the user might perform on the returned data-an architectural smell.Right now, the search screen has a whole bunch of form fields to search to return the data from the RDBMS in a data grid below the search form.Any advise on how to handle this use case with Solr as an example ? heard there is a plugin for Solr use with RDBMS's ? Are they useful for this use case? My earlier work place had lots of issues with SQL server with regards to space. TIA.

• Answer:

  As far as I understand your use-case, there will always be some lag between a commit in the database and writing the same to solr. Any solution you'll consider in this approach will basically revolve around reducing this lag. I have worked on applications which solve similar problem by keeping track of the incremental updates into the database and having a different program push these updates to SOLR. We have been able to push the incremental updates to SOLR within 100ms. Unless your application allows for some amount of lag, I'll say that the combination of SOLR and RDBMS will not really solve the problem. IMO, you should evaluate the full text indexing supported by MS-SQL server etc. I haven't really used yet but I guess it will worth giving it a try.