Question 1: Can we do Query time boosting(with dismax) only without mentioning boost values at Index time?
Question 2: What are the advantages/disadvantages of doing Index time boost over Query time boost and vice versa.
Query-time and index-time boosting:
At index-time, you have the option to boost a particular document (entirely or just a field). This is internally stored as part of the norms number, which must be enabled for this to work. It's uncommon to perform index-time boosting. At query-time, we have described earlier how to boost a particular clause of a query higher or lower if needed. Later the powerful Disjunction-Max (dismax for short) query will be demonstrated, which can apply searches to multiple fields with different boosting levels automatically.
--Paragraph from Chapter 4 of book "Solr 1.4 Enterprise Search Server"