By default, the ProductCatalogOutputConfig component is configured to create an XHTML document for each product in the product catalog. This means that each document indexed by ATG Search corresponds to a product, so that when a site visitor searches the catalog, each individual result returned represents a product.
Some sites may prefer to create a separate XHTML document for each SKU, so that each SKU is returned as a separate search result. For example, consider a site where different SKUs for a given product have different prices. With product-based indexing, if a search query specifies a constraint such as “return items whose price is less than $10.00,” the query will return any product that has a SKU whose price is less than $10.00, even if all the other SKUs of that product have higher prices. With SKU-based indexing, the query will return only the individual SKUs whose price is under $10.00.
To support SKU-based indexing, ATG Commerce includes the DCS.Search.Index.SKUIndexing module. This module makes various configuration changes to Commerce components to enable SKU-based indexing rather than product-based indexing. For example, it modifies the ProductCatalogOutputConfig component’s definition file (product-catalog-output-config.xml), setting the is-document attribute to false for the product item type, and to true for the childSKUs item type.
To enable SKU-based indexing on your site, include the DCS.Search.Index.SKUIndexing module when you assemble your application. See Running the Commerce Search Modules for more information.
