When Commerce Reference Store displays a category page, the list of child products is displayed by the ProductList-ATGCategoryChildren cartridge. As discussed in the Using Cartridges chapter, this cartridge retrieves the list of products from the ATG catalog repository, not the MDEX. By default, the products are sorted using the Top Picks option, which displays them in the order they appear in the category in ATG Merchandising:
The other sorting options available on the drop-down menu are implemented using the /atg/store/sort/RangeSortDroplet servlet bean.
When Commerce Reference Store displays a browse page (search results), the list of products is displayed by the ResultsList cartridge. In this case, the records associated with the appropriate products are retrieved from the MDEX. The same menu of five sorting options appears on this page, but since the data is coming from the MDEX, the options are implemented in Oracle Endeca Commerce using instances of the com.endeca.infront.cartridge.model.SortOptionConfig class. The default sorting option for the page can be specified by editing the ResultsList cartridge in Experience Manager.
The Top Picks option (which appears in Experience Manager as Default) works as follows:
If the current query does not include a search term (that is, it includes only dimension values), sort by values of the
sku.marginproperty, in descending order.If the current query includes a search term, apply the selected relevance ranking.
Relevance Ranking
Relevance ranking is a formula used by Oracle Endeca Commerce for ordering search results based on the number of times a search term is found in a record, which properties it is found in, how exact the match is, etc. For example, based on the ranking strategy being used, a record might be considered more relevant if the search term is found multiple times in certain key properties than if it is found only once in a less critical property.
Commerce Reference Store provides two relevance ranking options that can be selected in Experience Manager, labeled Margin Bias and Price Bias. These options are fundamentally similar, and differ only in which property is used to break ties. If two records have the same relevance ranking scores, the one with the higher value for sku.margin appears first if Margin Bias is used, while the one with the higher value for sku.activePrice appears first if Price Bias is used.
Note that to apply a relevance ranking, a search interface must be used. Therefore, Commerce Reference Store includes a search interface that configures various search behaviors. See the Oracle Endeca Commerce documentation for more information about relevance ranking and search interfaces.
