What is the difference between Solr vs Websolr?

Question

I am researching on full text search engine and I installed Sunspot which makes use of Apache Solr library. We host on Heroku and they offer a Websolr addon which confused me.

Can I use Sunspot without WebSolr on heroku?

Also Can anyone let me know where to find the websolr api key when i add the heroku websolr addon?

Answer 1

Solr is not a library. It's a stand-alone Java search server. Sunspot is a library, a Ruby client for Solr. WebSolr is a service that provides a hosted Solr instance. If you don't use Heroku's Websolr add-on, you'll have to provide your own Solr instance hosted somewhere else.