Details
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Sub-task
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Status: Resolved
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Major
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Resolution: Fixed
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None
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None
Description
The current requirement that the user install and deploy a PostgreSQL server complicates the installation and deployment of LCF for the user. Installation and deployment of LCF should be as simple as Solr itself. QuickStart is great for the low-end and basic evaluation, but a comparable level of simplified installation and deployment is still needed for full-blown, high-end environments that need the full performance of a ProstgreSQL-class database server. So, PostgreSQL should be bundled with the packaged release of LCF so that installation and deployment of LCF will automatically install and deploy a subset of the full PostgreSQL distribution that is sufficient for the needs of LCF. Starting LCF, with or without the LCF UI, should automatically start the database server. Shutting down LCF should also shutdown the database server process.
A typical use case would be for a non-developer who is comfortable with Solr and simply wants to crawl documents from, for example, a SharePoint repository and feed them into Solr. QuickStart should work well for the low end or in the early stages of evaluation, but the user would prefer to evaluate "the real thing" with something resembling a production crawl of thousands of documents. Such a user might not be a hard-core developer or be comfortable fiddling with a lot of software components simply to do one conceptually simple operation.
It should still be possible for the user to supply database server settings to override the defaults, but the LCF package should have all of the best-practice settings deemed appropriate for use with LCF.
One downside is that installation and deployment will be platform-specific since there are multiple processes and PostgreSQL itself requires a platform-specific installation.
This proposal presumes that PostgreSQL is the best option for the foreseeable future, but nothing here is intended to preclude support for other database servers in futures releases.
This proposal should not have any impact on QuickStart packaging or deployment.
Note: This issue is part of Phase 1 of the CONNECTORS-50 umbrella issue.