About synonyms

Synonyms provide a textual way to refer to a dimension value, rather than by ID alone. A dimension value can have multiple synonyms. All synonyms that you assign to dimension values must be unique.

You specify the way each synonym is used by the MDEX Engine with the Search, Classify, and (Display) options:

Enabling the Search option indicates that this synonym should be considered during record and dimension searches. You can enable search for multiple synonyms, allowing you to create a more robust dimension value for searching.
Enabling the Classify option indicates that this synonym should be considered when attempting to map a source property value to this dimension value. In order for a source property value to match a dimension value, the dimension value’s definition must contain a synonym that:
- Is an exact text match to the source property value (or, for range and sift dimension values, has a range that includes the property value).
- Has its Classify option enabled.
By enabling classification for multiple synonyms, you increase the mapping potential for a dimension value because a source property can map to any of the synonyms that have been marked with Classify. If a synonym does not have its Classify option enabled, it is ignored during mapping, regardless of whether or not it is a text match to a source property value.
While you can have multiple synonyms for a dimension value, only one synonym can be marked for display. This is the synonym whose text is displayed in your implementation whenever this dimension value is shown. By default, the first synonym you create is set to be displayed, as is indicated by the parentheses around the synonym’s name, but you can set any synonym for display in the Synonyms dialog box.

To better understand these three options, consider the following example. This dimension value has an ID of 100 (automatically assigned by Developer Studio) and three synonyms:

Dimension Value ID = 100
Synonyms =
2002 SEARCH=enabled CLASSIFY=enabled DISPLAY=yes
'02 SEARCH=enabled CLASSIFY=enabled DISPLAY=no
02 SEARCH=enabled CLASSIFY=enabled DISPLAY=no

In this example, dimension searches on any of the following terms would return the dimension value ID 100:

2002
'02
02

Records that have source property values that match any of the following would be tagged with the dimension value ID 100:

2002
'02
02

Finally, anytime the dimension value with an ID of 100 is displayed in the implementation, the text used to represent the dimension value is "2002".