As one of core parts in Walmart eCommerce platform, search system is facing challenges like fast growing number of products, increasing search traffic volume, real time update, and new business needs. To handle these challenges, we continuously improve and redesign the search architecture. 

This session will first introduce the architecture of Walmart eCommerce search system, followed by its challenges; then discuss several architecture design cases with focus on the search backend system; finally share experience and lessons we have learned in this evolution. 

Agenda 

• Introduce Walmart eCommerce search system 
• List challenges in the past several years 
• Show the search architecture evolution 

• a. Distributed search cloud (vs. open source Solr Cloud) 

  b. Re-rank (decouple from underlying search engine) 

  c. Metadata store (support real time update) 

  d. Microservices 

• Lessons learned 

  a. Pros & Cons using open source 

  b. Chaos by microservices Audiences 

get to know

• When to adopt/customize/replace open source software architecture
• Evolution experience with challenges of business growth
• The architecture of Walmart eCommerce search system