Snippet format and size

A snippet consists of search terms, surrounding context words, and ellipses.

A snippet can contain any number of search terms bracketed by <endeca_term></endeca_term> tags. The tags call out search terms and allow you to more easily reformat the terms for display in your Web application.

The snippet size is the total number of search terms and surrounding context words. You can configure the total number of words in a snippet as described in Enabling snippeting. In order to adhere to the size setting for a snippet, it is possible that the MDEX Engine may omit some search terms and context words from a snippet. This situation becomes more likely if an application user provides a large number of search terms and the maximum snippet size is comparatively small.

A snippet consists of one or more segments. The segments are delimited by ellipses in between them. Ellipses (...) indicate that there is text omitted from the snippet occurring before or after the ellipses.

For example, here is a snippet made up of two segments with a maximum size set at 20 words. The snippet resulted from a search for the search terms Scotland and British which are enclosed within <endeca_term> tags.

...in Edinburgh <endeca_term>Scotland</endeca_term>, and has been employed by Ford for 25 years ... He first joined Ford's <endeca_term>British</endeca_term> operation. Mazda motor ...