Hi again,

Is it true that I need to use range queries (by using NumericFieldUtils for example) to be able to search on numeric fields?
The documentation says nothing about it and, if I remember correctly, I was able to search on numeric field by using an ordinary Lucene query parser.
However, I don't get it to work at the moment, so maybe it never worked without using a range query?

Hi Elmer,
no NumericFields are a feature of latest Lucene versions: if you use them you can have some benefits, but they are not mandatory you can always use the old-style numeric encoding.

Remember that when you don't use NumericFields, you will likely want to apply some padding (leading zeros), and you will need to apply the same padding when searching. Finally, when using the Lucene Query Parser it will apply an analyzer on your input text, that might not be desirable! I'd stick with the programmatic approach do define the query.

See also the various PaddedIntegerBridge examples in the documentation.