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

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

Eclipse plug-in to create Class and Sequence diagrams

ModelGoon is an Eclipse plug-in avaiable for UML diagram generation from Java code. It can be used to generate Package Dependencies Diagram, Class Diagram, Interaction Diagram and Sequence Diagram. You coud get it from http://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/modelgoon-uml4java Read more about it and see some vedios about how to create the class and sequence diagram @ http://www.modelgoon.org/?tag=eclipse-plugin Find some snapshots below which gives an idea about the diagram generation.
8 comments
Read more

Basic design decisions for a commerce search setup ( with an ATG Search view)

In this blog I would like to explain the basic set of configuration/design decisions needed to setup an ATG search project. Most of these design decisions are common for all Enterprise search applications. 1. Decide the searchable properties :   This means the properties that the business want the user to search in the ecommerce platform. In ATG search these are configured as the text properties in the product-catalog-output-config.xml ( the definitionFile of the \atg\commerce\search\ProductCatalogOutputConfig). Usually the displayName of product/sku, displayName of department/category/sub-category, skuId, brandName are the properties configured as searchable. 2. Decide the search refinement properties or the faceted properties :   After a user search for a keyword, search refinement is the next step done to filter his results. ATG supports the search refinement using the Faceted Search concept. Read more about facted search @...
6 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

Search Facets - how to create a new search facets in ATG Search

A Facet is a search refinement element that corresponds to a property of a commerce item type. ATG supports the search result refinement using the Faceted Search concept. Read more about facted search @  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faceted_search . Facet can either be ranges or specific values. Each facet is stored in the RefinementRepository as a separate refineElement repository item. Facets are divided into Global and Local facets. Global facets apply to all the categories and local facets only to the category in which they are created. For example Price/Brand can be considered as the facets that are common for all skus and New Release/Coming Soon can be considered as the facets that are specific to Physical Media products like Vidoe/DVD/Blue-ray/Books. We can use the ATG BCC - Merchandising UI to create facets. The Faceting Property depends on the meta-properties defined in the \atg\commerce\search\product-catalog-output-config.xml ( the def...
4 comments
Read more