[SOLR-8110] Start enforcing field naming recomendations in next X.0 release?

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Chris M. Hostetter
• Created: 30/Sep/15 22:19
• Updated: 06/Apr/17 15:13

Description

For a very long time now, Solr has made the following "recommendation" regarding field naming conventions...

field names should consist of alphanumeric or underscore characters only and not start with a digit. This is not currently strictly enforced, but other field names will not have first class support from all components and back compatibility is not guaranteed. ...

I'm opening this issue to track discussion about if/how we should start enforcing this as a rule instead (instead of just a "recommendation") in our next/future X.0 (ie: major) release.

The goals of doing so being:

• simplify some existing code/apis that currently use hueristics to deal with lists of field and produce strange errors when the huerstic fails (example: ReturnFields.add)
• reduce confusion/pain for new users who might start out unaware of the recommended conventions and then only later encountering a situation where their field names are not supported by some feature and get frustrated because they have to change their schema, reindex, update index/query client expectations, etc...

Issue Links

• blocks: SOLR-8403 EmbeddedSolrServer has broken sorting with functions and non-alphanumeric symbols in field names
• is related to: SOLR-8642 SOLR allows creation of collections with invalid names
• is related to: SOLR-8308 Core gets inaccessible after RENAME operation with special characters
• relates to: SOLR-8725 Cores, collections, and shards should accept hyphens in identifier name