: Lucene has an API for very fast deletion of the index (ie, it removes : the files): IndexWriter.deleteAll(). It's part of the transaction, ... : But I don't know whether this is exposed in Solr...
Solr definitely has optimized the delete *:* case (but i don't know if it's using the specific method) I believe the poster is getting confused because immediately following this FAQ... http://wiki.apache.org/solr/FAQ#How_can_I_delete_all_documents_from_my_index.3F which says to use <delete><query>*:*</query></delete> which specificly notes: "This has been optimized to be more efficient then deleting by some arbitrary query which matches all docs because of the nature of the data." ...was this FAQ... http://wiki.apache.org/solr/FAQ#How_can_I_rebuild_my_index_from_scratch_if_I_change_my_schema.3F ...which until a moment ago gave outdated advice. -Hoss -- http://lucenerevolution.org/ ... October 7-8, Boston http://bit.ly/stump-hoss ... Stump The Chump!