Solr UIMA integration

(warning) UIMA Module was removed in Solr 7.5 (SOLR-11694)

(warning) Solr3.1

Solr UIMA contrib enables enhancing of Solr documents using the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA). UIMA lets you define custom pipelines of Analysis Engines which incrementally add metadata to the document via annotations.

SolrUIMA UpdateRequestProcessor

The SolrUIMA UpdateRequestProcessor is a custom UpdateRequestProcessor that takes document(s) being indexed, sends them to a UIMA pipeline and then returns the document(s) enriched with the specified metadata.

Installation

  1. Go to dev/solr/contrib/uima and run 'ant clean dist' 2. get the package apache-solr-uima-4.0-SNAPSHOT.jar together with the jars under the dev/solr/contrib/uima/lib directory and paste everything inside one of the lib directories of your Solr instance (defined inside the solrconfig.xml). You may need to create the lib directory for a specific core.
      mkdir solr/example/solr/collection1/lib
      cp solr/dist/apache-solr-uima*.jar solr/example/solr/collection1/lib
      cp solr/contrib/uima/lib/*.jar solr/example/solr/collection1/lib/
      cp solr/build/contrib/solr-uima/lucene-libs/lucene-analyzers-uima-4.0-SNAPSHOT.jar solr/example/solr/collection1/lib/
      

    3. modify your Solr instance config files as described in the solr/contrib/solr-uima/README.txt 4. run your Solr instance and enjoy UIMA enriching documents being indexed

Configuration

All the SolrUIMA configuration is placed inside a <uimaConfig> element inside the solrconfig.xml.

 <uimaConfig>
   <runtimeParameters>
     <!-- here go parameters defined in the AE which override parameters in the delegate AEs -->
      ...
  </runtimeParameters>
  <analysisEngine><!-- here goes the AE path in the classpath --></analysisEngine>
  <analyzeFields merge="true"><!-- comma separated list of fields of the original document to analyze --></analyzeFields>
  <fieldMapping>
    <!-- here goes the mapping between features of UIMA FeatureStructures to Solr fields  -->
    <type name="org.apache.uima.something.Annotation">
      <map feature="oneFeature" field="destination_field"/>
    </type>
    ...
  </fieldMapping>
 </uimaConfig>

The analysisEngine element holds the classpath to the UIMA Analysis Engine descriptor that describes which analysis block should be executed. The analysis engine referenced can be primitive or aggregate.

The analyzeFields element lists the name of fields (comma separated) which will be analyzed by the UIMA pipeline. If the attribute merge is false the field specified will be analyzed separately while if merge is true the listed fields contents will be merged and analyzed only once.

see SOLR-2129

UIMA components used

UIMA supports the use of existing analysis engines (see here and here) as long as the creation of custom components.

The current contrib/uima module uses a predefined set of components :

  1. WhitespaceTokenizer 2. HMMTagger 3. OpenCalaisAnnotator 4. AlchemyAPIAnnotator

These components are arranged in a pipeline inside the OverridingParamsExtServicesAE Analysis Engine descriptor. As you can see looking at the descriptor fragment;

        <node>AggregateSentenceAE</node>
        <node>OpenCalaisAnnotator</node>
        <node>TextKeywordExtractionAEDescriptor</node>
        <node>TextLanguageDetectionAEDescriptor</node>
        <node>TextCategorizationAEDescriptor</node>
        <node>TextConceptTaggingAEDescriptor</node>
        <node>TextRankedEntityExtractionAEDescriptor</node>

the first node represent an aggregate Analysis Engine which includes the Whitespace Tokenizer and HMM Tagger (recognizing sentences), the second node uses the Open Calais Annotator to extracte named entities, the following nodes use different Alchemy API Annotator services to detect keywords, language, document category, discovered concepts and named entities.

Using other UIMA components

To use different UIMA components inside the contrib/uima module you need to:

  1. import the component jar 2. use the new component Analysis Engine descriptor inside config/uimaConfig/analysisEngine element of solrconfig.xml 3. adjust Analysis Engine configuration (optional) 4. change the types and features' mapping inside config/uimaConfig/fieldMapping element of solrconfig.xml 5. deploy new apache-solr-uima.jar and component inside one of the lib directories

Import the component jar

If you're using Ant you only need put the component jar inside the solr/contrib/uima/lib directory.

If you're using Maven you need to declare the component you want to use inside the <dependencies> element in the generated pom.xml.

For example if you want to use UIMA Dictionary Annotator 2.3.1-SNAPSHOT you can either get it from snapshot repo and paste it in solr/contrib/uima/lib and run 'ant clean dist' or paste the following in the generated pom.xml (as child of the <dependencies> tag) and run 'mvn clean package'.

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.uima</groupId>
  <artifactId>DictionaryAnnotator</artifactId>
  <version>2.3.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>

Use a different UIMA descriptor

Change the descriptor to be used by this module inside config/uimaConfig/analysisEngine of the solrconfig.xml of your Solr instance.

One can use the default one bundled inside the component or create a new one.

For example to use one of the default Dictionary Annotator Analysis Engine descriptors use the following (which runs Whitespace Tokenizer and then Dictionary Annotator):

  <config>
    ...
    <uimaConfig>
      ...
      <analysisEngine>/AggregateAE.xml</analysisEngine>
      ...
    </uimaConfig>
    ...
  </config>

Adjust AE configuration (optional)

Sometimes Analysis Engines require custom parameters to be set inside their descriptor or custom resources to be imported. The easiest way to do so is to get a copy of such a descriptor, modify parameters/resources as needed and put them inside a directory which gets included in the final jar (i.e.: solr/contrib/uima/src/main/resources/org/apache/uima )

Change the types and features' mapping

Inside the solrconfig.xml go to config/uimaConfig/fieldMapping element and change <type> element according to the annotations extracted by the used component.

For example if you're using the Dictionary Annotator and you want to put the dictionary entry annotations found inside a 'lemmas' field you should configure the fieldMapping element as following:

<config>
  ...
  <uimaConfig>
    ...
    <fieldMapping>
      <type name="org.apache.uima.DictionaryEntry">
        <map feature="coveredText" field="lemmas"/>
      </type>
    </fieldMapping>
    ...
  </uimaConfig>
  ...
</config>

Deploy new jars inside one of the lib directories

Run 'ant clean dist' (or 'mvn clean package') from the solr/contrib/uima path.

Get the generated apache-solr-uima*.jar from the build directory along with the used components' jars and paste both inside one of the <lib> directories defined inside the solrconfig.xml.

You can now restart the Solr-UIMA instance to test it.

Solrcas

This is a UIMA component, see SVN and documentation

For a deepest dive into UIMA please take a look at the documentation