Searching means retrieving stored information using an input query. Indexing is the process of making documents and other content searchable. This searchable collection is then called the index. During indexing, Oracle ATG Web Commerce Search generalizes documents and other content into an abstraction called a content item. A content item consists of two main parts: searchable text content and metadata. Metadata includes the title, summary, and other associated properties. Examples of content items are products in an Oracle ATG Web Commerce catalog repository, HTML files, or structured data from a traditional database.

Within the index, content items are organized into document sets. You can think of these as virtual directory structures, which can offer a variety of routes to reach a particular content item. Oracle ATG Web Commerce Search creates some document sets from the physical location of the items, some sets from item metadata, and other sets using categorization results. Document sets allow end-users to search subsets of content and to browse without query input.

In Oracle ATG Web Commerce Search, end-user text queries are embedded by the client application within requests. A request may include parameters, processing options, constraints, security settings, and other information. The two primary request types are the Search Query and the View Item request. After receiving a request, Oracle ATG Web Commerce Search returns responses, which contain information that varies depending on the type of request. For a Search Query, the response contains a list of results plus other information to drive the search application or user interface.


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