Skip to main content

ATG Search architectural flow : Search and Index



I would like to explain the high level ATG Search implementation architecture ( for an online store) through the above diagram. In this diagram 1.x denotes the search functionality and 2.x denotes the indexing functionality. I have given JBoss as the application server.

Physical Boxes and Application Servers in the diagram ( as recommended by ATG )  :
  1. Estore ( Commerce ) Box --> The box with the estore/site ear (with the site JSPs and Java codes).
  2. Search Engine Box --> The box with the search engine application running.
  3. Indexing Engine Box --> The box with the indexing engine application running.
  4. CA (Content Administration) Box --> The box with the ATG CA ear ( where we could take CA -BCC - Search Administration and configure the search projects) .
  5. Search Indexer Box --> The box with the ATG Search Index ear ( to fetch the index data from repository). Note that the engine performing indexing will need access to the data it is indexing, which for production is the production repository. It will typically access the data via a commerce instance.  For best performance, and for large repositories, that commerce instance should be dedicated for search indexing, and should be a fast machine.
1. Search functionality flow details :

     1.1   Estore server will find the search engine box's host and search engine application running port details from the Search repository
     1.2   Estore server will call the Search engine application as a SOAP request using this host an port
     1.3   Search engine will find the search results using the index file
     1.4   Search engine will send the search results back to the Estore server

2. Index functionality flow details :

     2.1   CA server will start the indexing and will call the Search Index server to fetch the data to be indexed from the repository
     2.2   Search Index server will fetch the data from the catalog repository
     2.3   CA server will call the Index engine application to create the index files
     2.4   Index engine application will create the index files and keep it in a shared folder so that all the search engine applications can read it
     2.5   During the index deploy phase, all search engines will copy the index files to a local folder for fast access

If you need more details, please comment so that I can answer your specific questions  :-)


Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Anonymous18 January 2012 at 15:55

    nice article

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous15 February 2012 at 06:14

    it is great and simple. Incase both Ca, index and search engine are on same host even then will it communicate via RMI?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sony Thomas15 February 2012 at 12:26

    First of all, it is not recommended to have these 2 servers and search engine in the same host due to performance reasons. If we have them on the same box, communication with the search engine will always be through SOAP http request and from CA to search index will be via the remote port defined in search indexer.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous9 March 2012 at 01:49

    Does the engine query the latest deployed index for the results or does it query the index file that is mentioned as part of the search request?

    If it does the latter, how does the index information get updated on the client?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sony Thomas9 March 2012 at 10:12

    The engine will look into the current deployed index. The current deployed index can be the latest index or can be an old one deployed through historical index deploy.

    Why the client need the index information ?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous26 July 2012 at 16:46

    All articles related to ATG are really interesting and easy to understand Thomas! Great work.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous29 May 2014 at 12:10

    Ur are really amazing SONY.... Iam New to ATG.. I want to know more concepts of ATG will u help me plzzz.....

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ATG - basic concepts of ATG

This blog is for the ATG beginners to get some basic overview about ATG. I just given the ATG concepts as a list of numbered points for the ease of understanding. 1. At the framework level, ATG is a               java based application platform for hosting web-based applications, as well as RMI accessible business components,               with an ORM layer,               a component container,               an MVC framework,               and a set of tag libraries for JSP. 2. Art Technology Group(ATG)'s Dynamo Application Server (DAS) is a Java EE compliant application server. DAS is no longer actively developed as ATG recommends using other Java EE applications servers for its products such as BEA WebLogic, JBoss or IBM WebSphere. 3. Prior to ATG 2007, JHTML was used instead of JSP for view purpose. J...
4 comments
Read more

ATG Search - how to configure multiple language search

Here I am going to explain the steps involved in configuring the multi-language ATG Search if your site support multiple language. I have given the different steps in indexing and search flows. Indexing flow : You could configure different search projects for different locales to support parallel search indexing for each locale. You could setup search environment for the search projects so that the indexing host is different for the two projects. Configure the LocaleVariantProducer @ ProductCatalogOutputConfig to specify the locale for the new language. Include the language dictionaries you need in Search Admin on the Search Projects which can be used for indexing and searching in multiple languages. Specify the locales @ \atg\search\config\LanguageDimensionService so that you could configure the search configurations for each language. When you create the search configuration tree, specify the "Contents vary by" as Language, to configure the search configurations li...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tax Credit Statement ( Form 26AS )

Read more about Tax filing @  http://tips4ufromsony.blogspot.com/2011/07/income-tax-process-and-e-filing.html  . Form 26AS is a consolidated tax statement issued under Rule 31 AB of Income Tax Rules to PAN holders. This statement, with respect to a financial year, will include details of: Tax deducted at source (TDS). Tax collected at source (TCS). Advance tax/self assessment tax/regular assessment tax etc., deposited in the bank by the taxpayers (PAN holders). Paid refund received during the financial year. Form 26AS will be prepared only with respect to Financial Year 05-06 onwards. To view the Form26AS , log-in to https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in and click on ‘View Tax Credit Statement (From 26AS)’  in ‘My Account’. Read more about Form 26AS  @ http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/26ASTaxCreditStatement.asp http://www.tin-nsdl.com/form26as.asp
Post a Comment
Read more

ATG search installation and search engine log files

Here I would like to explain how your ATG search folder structure looks like after you do the ATG search installation and also about the search engine log files. To get the ATG search, you need to install the ATGSearch<version>Windows.exe after you do the ATG installation. When you install ATG search, the generated folders include an OS dependant folder. In the below screen shot, you could see the "i686-win32-vc71" folder and this is generated since the ATG search ins installed in a windows machine. The ATG search engine is actually an exe file inside this "i686-win32-vc71" folder. Below screen shot give you an idea about the "atgsearch.exe", which is the search engine application. This search engine application (atgsearch.exe) is started by a remote launcher call from the BCC search administration UI.  The log files like "atgsearch_20120106112413_568.log" are the search engine log files where you could see the engine ...
2 comments
Read more

ATG Search and startRemoteLauncher

If the search engine application is running in a separate box than the ATG CA-BCC deployed server, the search engine is invoked through a remoteLauncher running in these boxes. Means, a remoteLauncher needs to run in the host where SearchEngine is installed remotely to start the search engine. You could find the startRemoteLauncher.sh @ ATG/ATG2007.1/Search2007.1/SearchAdmin/bin/startRemoteLauncher.sh Start remoteLauncher using the command   ./startremotelauncher.sh –p <RMI Launcher service Port > & The Launcher Service Port on the host machine can be found in BCC @ Search Administration>Projects > Search Project: gmri_search_en_CA > Environments > Host Machine: > Advanced Settings. If the startRemoteLanucher reports a BindingException , then you need to find the process that is using the launchServicePort. For that run the netstat command like :   netstat -an |grep 10880 Then inorder to identify the process t...
Post a Comment
Read more