As you will be aware from previous updates (April update, June update 1 and June update 2), we have been experiencing problems with the NBN Atlas for a while. Over recent months the records and species searches have been running slowly and often failing to return results with a timeout error. The two searches run off separate Solr indexes and in February we engaged a Solr Specialist company to perform an audit on our current Solr implementation and make recommendations on how to improve the performance and stability of the NBN Atlas searches.
After further refinement and testing of the new configuration with the Solr company, the searches are now functioning significantly better and the overall stability of the Atlas has greatly improved. We will continue to monitor performance and keep you informed of any changes.
We know that the unreliability of the Atlas has been extremely frustrating for our community of Atlas users and we are very grateful for the patience and understanding of those affected. We would like to apologise if your work, or your colleagues’ work, has been hindered in any way.
A project page dedicated to the long term stability and performance of the NBN Atlas will be live soon and we will provide you with regular progress updates. Links will appear on the NBN Atlas homepage when this is available.
If you have any comments or questions, please do get in touch with us at support@nbn.org.uk
As always, we thank you for your patience and support.