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.


Labels:

Comments

  1. Unknown13 June 2013 at 20:40

    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. Sony Thomas5 July 2013 at 21:38

    - 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

Google Chrome shortcut keys

If you are a Google Chromey guy, please find below the list of shortcut keys for some of the most used features  :-) Find more shortcut keys @  http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=25799&topic=28650
4 comments
Read more

ATG - how to create and deploy a new atg module

ATG products are packaged as a number of separate application modules. Application modules exist in the ATG installation as a set of directories defined by a manifest file. To create a new module, follow the below steps : Create a module directory within your ATG installation.  Create a META-INF directory within the module directory. Note that this directory must be named META-INF.  Create a manifest file named MANIFEST.MF and include it in the META-INF directory for the module. The manifest contains the meta-data describing the module. A module located at <ATG2007.1dir>/MyModule is named MyModule and a module located at <ATG2007.1dir>/CustomModules/MyModule is named CustomModules.MyModule. Within the subdirectory that holds the module, any number of files may reside in any desired order. These files are the module resources (EAR files for J2EE applications, WAR files for web applications, EJB-JAR files for Enterprise JavaBeans, JAR files of Java class...
4 comments
Read more

ATG Search troubleshooting tips

In this blog, I have listed some basic ATG Search troubleshooting tips in some general scenarios. 1. If the index did not deploy, consider the following possible causes : Is the DeployShare property configured @ /atg/search/routing/LaunchingService component ?  Is enough space available @ deployment share box for the index ?  Are the RMI ports configured correctly in the RoutingSystemService component ?  If the search engine application is running in a separate box, this application is invoked through a RemoteLauncher running in these boxes. Check whether these RemoteLaunchers are running in these boxes ? 2. If you have trouble in launching one or more search engines, try the following remedies: If the Search engine is standalone, set the /atg/search/routing/LaunchingService component’s engineDir property to the absolute path of the Search engine directory.  3. Search unavailable in the estore page, even when the SearchEngine is in "Running" st...
5 comments
Read more

ATG Search - how estore(commerce instance) forms the search engine SOAP URL ?

The comminucation between the Commerce box and the Search engine is through SOAP. Read  more about this architecture @  http://tips4ufromsony.blogspot.in/2011/11/atg-search-architectural-flow-search.html The commerce instance forms the SOAP url just like the below code: private URL getSearchEngineURL(SearchEngine engine) {       SearchEnvironmentHost h =  engine.getSearchEnvironmentHost();       SearchMachine hi = h.getSearchMachine() ;       return new URL( "http://" + hi.getHostname() + ":" + engine.getPort() + "/AEXmlService/" );   } So the commerce instance need the hi.getHostname()  and engine.getPort() to form the url. It is obtained as below: 1. The component / atg/commerce/search/refinement/ CommerceFacetSearchService has the siteName defined, which will be pointing to the environment name defined in the Search Project. Read  more about this search project setup @  http://...
4 comments
Read more

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...
11 comments
Read more