[LUCENE-3486] Add SearcherLifetimeManager, so you can retrieve the same searcher you previously used

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 3.5, 4.0-ALPHA
• Component/s: core/search
• Lucene Fields: New
• Assignee: Michael McCandless
• Reporter: Michael McCandless
• Created: 04/Oct/11 18:21
• Updated: 28/Aug/22 12:58
• Resolved: 10/Oct/11 22:17

Description

The idea is similar to SOLR-2809 (adding searcher leases to Solr).

This utility class sits above whatever your source is for "the
current" searcher (eg NRTManager, SearcherManager, etc.), and records
(holds a reference to) each searcher in recent history.

The idea is to ensure that when a user does a follow-on action (clicks
next page, drills down/up), or when two or more searcher invocations
within a single user search need to happen against the same searcher
(eg in distributed search), you can retrieve the same searcher you
used "last time".

I think with the new searchAfter API (LUCENE-2215), doing follow-on
searches on the same searcher is more important, since the "bottom"
(score/docID) held for that API can easily shift when a new searcher
is opened.

When you do a "new" search, you record the searcher you used with the
manager, and it returns to you a long token (currently just the
IR.getVersion()), which you can later use to retrieve the same
searcher.

Separately you must periodically call prune(), to prune the old
searchers, ideally from the same thread / at the same time that
you open a new searcher.