Can you post the full exception?
b) Do a query in the SOLR admin tool title_s: photo book
Do you have a space after the ':'? q=title_s: photo book I expect that would fail (though null pointer is not a very nice error) q=title_s:"photo book" should work fine: title_s:photo book would match "photo" for field 'title_s' and "book" for the default field. ryan
