This section describes the steps involved in creating a search index.
When Oracle ATG Web Commerce Search creates an index, it does the following:
Checks to make sure that an ATG Content Administration deployment is not in progress (if it is, indexing waits until deployment is complete)
Prepares content for indexing by converting it to XML
Indexes the content
Determines the number of physical partitions required for the index
More than one content set can be indexed at the same time, if enough indexing engines are available (see the ATG Search Installation and Configuration Guide for architecture recommendations), however, the indexes must be for different search projects. Additional indexing requests that involve the same content, or indexing tasks that exceed the capacity of the search engines, are queued until the content is available.
In addition, indexing tasks are deferred to the queue while an ATG Content Administration deployment is in progress. If the deployment is in progress when the indexing task begins, indexing waits until the deployment is finished. If a deployment begins during indexing, the indexing task stops; when the deployment is finished, the indexing task starts over, ensuring that the index contains the latest content.
You can access the queue from the Status Monitor tab during indexing, as shown:
When indexing is complete, the resulting indexes can be automatically copied to search environments.
Note: If you are using the multisite feature and change the sites associated with your content, the next time you index content, Search automatically performs a full index even if an incremental index was selected. This is necessary to ensure that site associations are correctly represented in search results.
To build an index using the project’s default settings:
On the Projects tab, go to Projects > Your Project.
Click the Manage Indexing link.
Click the Build Index button.
The window changes to the Status Monitor tab.
If you have selected to stop indexing after estimation, when the estimation is finished, click Continue Indexing.
To build an index using settings other than the project defaults:
On the Projects tab, go to Projects > Your Project > Indexing > Index Setup tab.
Click the Manage Indexing link.
Select the Indexing Task.
Each task can provide additional options depending on your selections. The following example shows the Full Index with All Content task.
Full index with all content—Builds your entire index from scratch, using the content sets you select and the most up-to-date customization data, then deploys to the environments you select.
Full index with selected content—Specify particular content sets to be reindexed.
Incremental index—Only indexes new or modified content in an existing index. You can select whether or not to update all content sets, and whether to apply post-indexing customization data.
Note: Incremental indexes involve comparing old to new content to determine changes, and can take longer to build than a full index. You need to do at least one full index before using incremental indexing.
Note: If you try to do an incremental index of selected content sets when you have changed a pre-index customization that applies to that index, such as adding a core language, Oracle ATG Web Commerce Search performs a full reindex, not an incremental index. This prevents you from having out of date customization data for the non-selected content sets.
Similarly, if you have configured the
maxIncrementalChanges
property of yourProductCatalogOutputConfig
component (this property is rarely used), and if the number of updates exceeds the configured limit, a full index is performed.Load Post-Index Customizations Only—Updates the index by reapplying post-index customization data (such as topics) but makes no other changes. You can either apply all post-index customizations, or specify customizations to apply.
Deploy Only—Deploys your existing index to the selected environments without making any changes.
Select content to index. Some indexing tasks allow you to specify which content sets are indexed.
Click the checkboxes to select those content sets you want to index.
Select customizations to update. The indexing task you select may allow you to choose whether to apply all customizations, or only selected post-indexing customizations.
Note: If you are using Search Merchandising facets, make sure to add your Facet Sets and Search Configurations to the index as post-indexing customizations.
Select deployment environments. Some indexing options allow you to deploy the indexed content when indexing is concluded. Check the environments to which you want to deploy the index.
Click Build Index. After indexing, the page shows success/failure metrics for each step, and provides access to any error messages logged.
Indexing errors can occur due to problems with the content (unsupported file type, corrupted or otherwise unreadable file, etc.) or with the customization data (duplicate definitions in a dictionary, references to content items not in the index, invalid terms in a term weight file, etc.). If you encounter customization data errors, you may be able to address them by editing your customization data.
Some examples of customization data error messages are:
-- Rank config missing pattern: Content Item: cust-100002:Rank Config:/atg/searchadmin/adapter/customization/RankConfigVFS,rankConfig_ 1174904401681.xml Errors for Merchandising Search Configuration "D:\Dynamo\home\localconfig\atg\searchadmin\customizations\ rank_configs\rankConfig_1174904401681.xml" Identifier Type Description Other Info cfg7002_rule21002_0 error Failed to extract pattern path: /Ranking/cfg7002/rule21002 -- Facet Set (refinements) missing range information: Content Item: cust-100008:Refinement Configuration:/atg/searchadmin/adapter/customization/RefinementVFS,facet_dsw.xml Errors for Facet Set "D:\Dynamo\home\localconfig\atg\searchadmin\customizations\ refinements\facet_dsw.xml" Identifier Type Description Other Info 300004 element Missing explicit ranges 300006 element Missing explicit ranges 300012 element Missing explicit ranges
Note: The Time Remaining estimate reflects only index creation. File deployment may take additional time.
Note: You can build indexes for separate projects in parallel. You can run multiple indexing tasks for a single project in parallel only if the updates do not involve the same content sets. If the same content sets are involved, indexing tasks are queued.