Q:

What is the default search handler of Solr 3.3; what handler to choose for these queries?

I tried Googling, but all documentation (including Solr's) are torn between versions 1.3 to 3.3, which is not helpful to a newb to Solr.
I get it that the "standard" query processor (the one that responds to /select?q=id:*) of 3.3 is as advanced as Dismax of 1.4. Please correct me on this.
Please suggest where to go (turorials) and what to use(query handler) when I want to implement these:

when I want to suggest a facet to the user; "Pets in Cochin" will facet in two fields
search all fields, but give different weights to each
when I want to integrate my algorithms seamlessly with Solr's default; such as solrs_scoring()*date_scoring() where date_scoring() would be e^-(k*time_from_now) (this seems recommended everywhere dates are mentioned).

As I mentioned, I ask here as Google doesnt help much when docs are scattered. This is not a "gimme the codez" question.

A:

The Solr documentation is this Apache wiki. Documentation is not scattered: it's all in this wiki.
Documentation is quite good: you have an introduction, tutorial, FAQs, installation guides, tips/tricks and reference documentation. It's all kept up to date with the latest stable release (at the time of writing, 3.3), and it even has some 4.0 features documented. Whenever some feature or config bit is version-specific, you'll see a warning icon along with something like "Solr4.0" to indicate the minimum required version for that feature.
Now to the more technical questions: the default handler uses the standard query processor, not dismax. They're different things: it's not like one is more advanced than the other. The Solr relevancy FAQ covers the question "Should I use the standard or dismax Query Parser"
If you still feel lost, consider getting a book about Solr.

