: 1. Identify all records that would match search terms. (Suppose I : search for 'dog', and get 450,000 matches) : 2. Of those records, find the distinct list of groups over all the : matches. (Suppose there are 300.) : 3. Now get the top ranked record from each group, as if you search : just for docs in the group.
this sounds similar to "Field Collapsing" although i don't really understand it or your specific use case enough to be certain that it's the same thing. You may find the patch, and/or the discussions about the patch useful starting points... https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SOLR-236 http://wiki.apache.org/solr/FieldCollapsing -Hoss
