What is the use of Field.Set OmitNorms(true); in lucene

Question

Hi All, I have been suggested to use Field.Set OmitNorms(true); when creating the documents for lucenesearch to sort the result according to the number of hits, but I am not clear of what it does and is it safe.

sort the result according to the number of hits means that the document in which search text is found maximum number of times should come on the top followed b the ones with less number of match for search text.

I know its silly but I want to know before I implement this please help.

Answer 1

Check out this article for a good paragraph description of what omit norms does in term of optimisation. Basically its kind of like having a mini lucene index for the terms inside of a field, so its really only useful for fields that would have a lot of text inside them.