About synonyms

Synonyms provide a textual way to refer to a dimension value, rather than by ID alone. You specify the way each synonym is used by the MDEX Engine in the Dimension Value Synonyms editor in Developer Studio.

A dimension value can have multiple synonyms. You can choose from Search, Classify, and (Display) options as follows:

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.
- Has its Classify option enabled.
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.

Again, 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.
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.

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, records with source property values matching any of the following terms would be tagged with the dimension value ID 100, and dimension searches on those terms would return that dimension value ID:

2002

‘02

02

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

After you have created the dimension and defined any manual dimension values, you create the mapping between a source property and the dimension.

Note: The UI reference implementation has been written to iterate over all the dimensions that are returned with a query and display them, so you don’t have to do any additional coding to get the dimension to display in the UI.

Continue adding dimensions and mapping them to source properties. You can map multiple source properties to a single dimension.