Skip to main content

ATG Search Indexing - overview of different steps in search indexing


Read more about the search indexing behind the scene steps @ http://tips4ufromsony.blogspot.in/2011/12/atg-search-indexing-behind-scene-steps.html

ATG Search prepares searchable content by indexing the products specified in the XML definition file (/atg/commerce/search/ProductCatalogOutputConfig).

Generally there are two types of indexing
1.  Full Indexing  --> all data taken for indexing
2.  Incremental Indexing --> only changed data will be taken for indexing

When full indexing is triggered, following happens:

   1. The out of box component BulkLoader will call IndexedItemsGroup.getGroupMembers() to load the products to the XHTL document. It prevents uncategorized products from getting indexed. The definition file format begins with a top-level item as a product and includes the properties of parent category and childskus. For each product, the set of Variant Producers configured in ProductCatalogOutputConfig is executed to check how many index items are to be created.

   2. XHTML documents are generated for each product, in order to submit to the engine for indexing. The XHTML is generated based on the definition file specified in ProductCatalogOutputConfig. An XHTML document that represents a Commerce product includes information about its parent category’s properties, as well as information about the properties of the child SKUs.

  3. The definition file, product-catalog-output-config is parsed to generate the text and meta properties, to be added to the index. The Text–properties indicates the properties which can be searched on. The Meta-properties indicate the properties which can be sent as constraints for faceted search. The text property will be specified in <text-properties> tag and meta property in <meta-properties> tag. The properties for which there is a custom property accessor specified, the property accessor is used to obtain the value to be indexed.

  4. After all the products have been added, the out of box PostIndexCustomization is executed to add any refineConfig and rankConfig information. This is used by the engine for generating facets and for manipulating the search results

  In case of failure in indexing, check the following logs
- JBoss server logs - <JBOSS_HOME>\server\atg\logs\server.log
- Dumping request logs Folder - <ATG_HOME>\logs\searchEngineActivity\*.xml ( request and response xmls). These logs will provide whether what was the request send to search engine in xml form and what was the response from engine for a query.
- Soap request logs - <ATG_HOME>\Search2007.1\SearchEngine\i686-win32-vc71\bin. This is used for checking the indexing failing.


Comments

  1. Hi, I've been dealing with some questions regarding Search and indexing, I got the process a lot clear now (thanks for that) but I got some questions:
    - if there are problems with facets, like not showing the right facets configured, does that mean there was a problem during the indexing on the PostIndexCustomization?
    - Why during the PostIndexCustomization the indexing can take too long, like 2 hours? And before it took like 30 min, what could be a starting point to find what is wrong?
    - Which one is better, full or incremental indexing? Can both coexist? What do you recommend?

    Thanks a lot!

    ReplyDelete
  2. - If there are issues with facets not showing on the site, first check the data in your database, then the refinement repository, then the refineconfig passed to search engine.

    - I haven't tries incremental indexing.But if you have small changes per day, you can go ahead with incremental, otherwise go with full indexing

    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...

ATG - more about Forms and Form Handlers

An ATG form is defined by the dsp:form tag, which typically encloses DSP tags that specify form elements, such as dsp:input that provide direct access to Nucleus component properties. Find below a sample dsp:form tag.    <dsp:form action="/testPages/showPersonProperties.jsp" method="post" target="_top">      <p>Name: <dsp:input bean="/samples/Person.name" type="text"/>      <p>Age: <dsp:input bean="/samples/Person.age" type="text" value="30"/>      <p><dsp:input type="submit" bean="/samples/Person.submit"/> value="Click to submit"/>    </dsp:form>   When the user submits the form, the /samples/Person.name property is set to the value entered in the input field.Unlike standard HTML, which requires the name attribute for most input tags; the name attribute is optional for DSP form element tags. If an input tag omits the n...

ATG - how to prevent Cross-Site attacks using _dynSessConf parameter

Cross-site scripting attacks take advantage of a vulnerability that enables a malicious site to use your browser to submit form requests to another site. In order to protect forms from cross-site attacks in ATG, you can enable form submissions to automatically supply the request parameter _dynSessConf , which identifies the current session through a randomly generated long number. On submission of a form (using dsp:form tag) or activation of a property setting (using dsp:a tag), the request-handling pipeline ( DAFDropletEventServlet ) validates _dynSessConf  against its session confirmation identifier. If it detects a mismatch or missing number, it can block form processing and return an error. To disable this functionality, we could give the following properties (@ /atg/dynamo/Configuration to disable it globally) enforceSessionConfirmation  = false -->  specifies whether the request-handling pipeline requires session confirmation in order to proc...

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...

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