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DSpace Discovery is a Maintained Addon for DSpace XMLUI that replaces the default Search and Browse behavior with Apache Solr.

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• Discovery will be compiled/installed into DSpace 1.7.0 XMLUI but left disabled by default
• The Appropriate Solr Search Core will be available and prepared to be started
• All dependencies for turning on Discovery will be available without recompilation by doing the following steps:
• Solr will be upgraded to the latest 1.4.1 release
• Documentation will be included which outlines exactly how to turn on Discovery and run it

Introduction Video

http://www.youtube.com/v/abRSXTUEwws

Documentation

*Discovery Configuration in DSpace 1.7.0
*Discovery Install in pre 1.7.0 HowTo

Design Premise for Discovery

The Design premise behind Discovery is to keep as much the implementation of Search and Browse independent of DSpace as possible. The basis for this is to twofold. (a) to reduce cost in maintaining any customized code and (b) to repurpose third party solutions wherever possible (a.k.a. standing on shoulder of giants).  So, the basic tenants are:

1. Keep as much of the customization and configuration in Solr as possible.
2. Keep it as generic as possible.
3. Keep it as simple as possible.
4. In cases where configuration is outside Solr, provide pluggability to replace functionality easily at end user deployment.
5. Align Search/Browse capabilities with Solr capabilities, not other way around.  This means, possibly abandon certain strategies for navigating via Browse if it proves these do not fit well with Solr.

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Discovery is currently an addon for DSpace that still requires significant addition of configuration files to support.  Planned releases will initially coincide with DSpace Scheduled Releases. Eventually, once completely stabilized, Discovery may be included into DSpace releases as a replacement for DSpace Search and Browse out of the box.

Issue Management

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./bin/dspace update-discovery-index -f

The general discovery settings (discovery.cfg)

The discovery.cfg file is located in the dspace.dir/config/modules directory, it contains the following properties: 

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Many of the properties contain lists which use references to point to the configuration elements. This way a certain configuration type can be used in multiple discovery configurations so there is no need to duplicate these.Adding a new discovery configuration

Mapping a discovery configuration to the home page or a specified community/collection

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• class: org.dspace.discovery.configuration.DiscoveryConfiguration

• scope:prototype

  Code Block
  lang xml
  <bean id="{identifier}" class="org.dspace.discovery.configuration.DiscoveryConfiguration" scope="prototype"> </bean>

  Configuring sidebar facets

Add a new element named property and the attribute name="sidebarFacets" and add a subelement list. This property is mandatory by the discovery configuration.

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<property name="recentSubmissionConfiguration">
    <bean class="org.dspace.discovery.configuration.DiscoveryRecentSubmissionsConfiguration">
        <property name="metadataSortField" value="dc.date.accessioned"/>
        <property name="type" value="date"/>
        <property name="max" value="5"/>
    </bean>
</property>

Deploying the custom discovery configuration

The DSpace web application only reads your custom configuration when it starts up, so it is important to remember:

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./bin/dspace update-discovery-index -f

Other Resources

• http://lucene.apache.org/solr/
• AJAX Integration: http://github.com/evolvingweb/ajax-solr http://solrjs.solrstuff.org/
• Integration With DSpace REST project for unified Search and Browse in the REST webapplication as well.
• Access Control Request Handler for Solr Access control for Solr Service, Documents and Fields.
• General specifications
• FieldType JAVADOC
• Predefined FieldTypes in SolR
• http://wiki.github.com/evolvingweb/ajax-solr/reuters-tutorial-step-9 Integrate AutoSuggest, Tag Clouds, Google Maps and dynamic Paging into DSpace Search Results.