[hibernate-dev] [HSEARCH] Scope of the first version with ES support

[Gunnar Morling]

Hey,

I'd like to achieve clarity and agreement on the scope of HSEARCH 5.6, the
first release with support for the Elasticsearch indexing backend.

I suggest we limit ourselves to the essential things making the backend
actually usable and release it as a "technology preview" as of 5.6.0.Final.
Everything not needed for that goal I'd move to subsequent releases (5.7,
6.0), the motivation being that we should not kill the vibe and deliver
something real soon.

Some candidates for moving over I see:

* "Define analyzers via the REST API (HSEARCH-2219
<https://hibernate.atlassian.net/browse/HSEARCH-2219>)": Users can create
the needed analyzers themselves
* "Consider using the fields feature of Elasticsearch for properties mapped
on several fields" (HSEARCH-2215
<https://hibernate.atlassian.net/browse/HSEARCH-2215>): Seems scheduled as
a "reminder" only anways?
* "Use the Elasticsearch Scroll API when fetching large result sets" (
HSEARCH-2128 <https://hibernate.atlassian.net/browse/HSEARCH-2128>): Seems
not strictly needed
* "Map the optimize() operation to Elasticsearch 'force merge' requests" (
HSEARCH-2092 <https://hibernate.atlassian.net/browse/HSEARCH-2092>): Manual
requests possible as a work-around
* Likely some others

Things we *should* do are most mapping-related issues, documentation and
apparent perf issues (massing indexing, avoid too frequent refreshing).

The public interest in the subject seemed good, so I'd prefer if we can
ship a "Final" version soon in MVP-style. As it seems, a "final" tech
preview is less scary to people than an Alpha/Beta. Let's hone the bits it
in subsequent releases, rather than working on the first Final for a long
time.

Any thoughts?

--Gunnar