🇬🇧 Federated Search at Enterprise Scale
Summary:
In this video, I share my experience tackling the complexities of a federated search system within a large enterprise platform that serves over 100 million users across 50 websites. The challenge was not just to build features but to deeply understand the existing architecture, which involved revisiting the fundamentals of Apache Lucene, Solr, and Fusion. I reverse-engineered the platform, documented my findings, and designed a federated architecture that scales to 150 sites while reducing human bottlenecks. This ongoing project empowers Drupal admins to control federation logic without direct interaction with the search platform, ultimately saving costs. I encourage you to consider the importance of clarity in system design as we move forward.
Transcript:
0:00: For the research sounds simple on paper. At enterprise scale, it’s one of the harder systems to reason about. Especially when you inherit it, and nobody can clearly explain how it works.
0:15: That’s the situation I walk into. This is a large enterprise platform. Over 150 websites, thousands of locals, search already in place using Drupal and Lucyworks.
0:32: The challenge was in building features, it was understanding the system well enough to make safe architectural decisions. The competition was unfortunately not updated, as it was limited at first.
0:47: The platform user interface was challenging and getting clear answers took a while. So instead of waiting, I went back to the fundamentals.
0:59: I revisited how Apache Luzin works, how Apache solider builds on it, and how fusion orchestrates it, and how Drupal fits data into the system.
1:12: How good fit data into the system because we don’t have anything. I reverse engineer the platform, just build mental models.
1:22: Drill gerums, I use all my whiteboards here to document everything. And only then started designing the federated architecture.
1:34: That clarity led to me to an approach that scales to 150 sites. This reduces human bottlenecks and lets Drupal admin controls Federation logic safely.
1:50: Without needing to touch the search platform directly, and that means you save a money right there, this project is still ongoing, but the foundation is now very solid.
2:02: In upcoming videos I’ll break down the architecture, the trade-offs, and the parents that actually work at this scale. This is how failure research really works in the real world.
