Implementing dynamic refinement ranking

A core capability of the MDEX Engine is the ability to dynamically order and present the most popular refinement dimension values to the user.

When the dynamic refinement ranking feature is implemented, the refinement dimension values that are returned for a query are pruned to those values that occur most frequently in the requested navigation state; that is, the refinement dimension values that are most popular.

There are two ways that you can configure dynamic refinement ranking for your application:

By configuring specific dimensions in Developer Studio.
By using API calls for query-time control of dynamic refinement ranking. Note that by using these calls, you can override the Developer Studio settings for a given dimension.

The following sections describe how to implement these methods.

Tie breaker for dynamic ranking

Dynamic ranking orders the refinement dimension values by:

refinement count (descending), then by
static rank assigned (descending), then by
dimension value id (descending)

If static ranking is not used, all refinement dimension values will have been assigned a static rank of 1 and the dimension value Id will be the ultimate tie breaker. (Static ranking is also known as manual dimension value ranking.) Therefore, you can control the dynamic ranking tie breaker by either assigning a static rank to the dimension value or by controlling the dimension value ID assigned.