Challenge

Previously, the search functionalities of the Albatros website were based on Endeca. Endeca originally was a great solution to introduce advanced search functionalities like guided navigation and smart free text search. Over time, however, Albatros started to struggle with the large number of records that are very common in the travel industry. Besides that, Oracle bought Endeca and decided not to further develop the solution.

Solution

In one of our R&D projects, the solution analysts discovered Solr, an Open-Source Search solution, which turned out to be an exceptional replacement. It offered all the functionalities from Endeca and was even better in free text search and personalization options. Most importantly, because of its architecture and setup, it is much better at dealing with large data sets, actually this is in fact what it originally was designed for.

An advanced search solution was created based on Solr optimized for Travel. After successfully implementing this Solr search solution for new clients, it was decided to also migrate our existing clients to this new and better solution.

This might have felt a bit like an open heart surgery, but smart choices were made like building the new application alongside the existing one, allowing tests to compare any differences and making the switch when ready.