You may prefer to create a separate XHTML document for each SKU, so that each SKU can be returned as a separate search result. For example, consider an environment where different SKUs for a given product have different prices. With product-based indexing, if a search query specifies a constraint such as “return items whose price is less than $10.00,” the query will return any product that has a SKU whose price is less than $10.00, even if all the other SKUs of that product have higher prices. With SKU-based indexing, the query will return only the individual SKUs whose price is under $10.00.
This behavior is especially desirable for faceted search. Note, however, that indexing by SKU results in a larger index than product-based indexing, because of the larger number of XHTML documents, and therefore can lead to slower performance. If most of your products have only a single SKU, or if your faceting properties have the same value for all of a product’s SKUs (e.g., if you use manufacturer as a faceting property), product-based indexing is more efficient.
Enabling SKU-Based Indexing
To support SKU-based indexing, Oracle ATG Web Commerce includes the DCS.Search.Index.SKUIndexing module. This module makes various configuration changes to Commerce components to enable SKU-based indexing rather than product-based indexing. For example, it modifies the ProductCatalogOutputConfig component’s definition file (product-catalog-output-config.xml), setting the is-document attribute to false for the product item type, and to true for the childSKUs item type.
The following is a sample XHTML document generated for a SKU, based on the product-catalog-output-config.xml definition file. Note that product remains the top-level item, so although a separate document is created for each SKU, the property names are still relative to the product:
<html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"/> <title>Wheel Cylinder</title> <meta name="atg:string:$repositoryId" content="prod10003"/> <meta name="atg:date:creationDate" content="988310992"/> <meta name="atg:string:$repository.repositoryName" content="CustomProductCatalog"/> <meta name="atg:string:$itemDescriptor.itemDescriptorName" content="product"/> <meta name="atg:string:parentCategory.$repositoryId" content="cat20039"/> <meta name="atg:date:parentCategory.creationDate" content="983821019"/> <meta name="atg:string:ancestorCategories.$repositoryId" content="cat20002"/> <meta name="atg:string:ancestorCategories.$repositoryId" content="cat20039"/> <meta name="atg:string,docset:ancestorCategories.catalogSpecificId" content="cat20002_300004"/> <meta name="atg:string,docset:ancestorCategories.catalogSpecificId" content="cat20039_300004"/> <meta name="atg:string:catalogs.$repositoryId" content="300004"/> <meta name="atg:string,index:childSKUs.$repositoryId" content="sku10004"/> <meta name="atg:string:childSKUs.$itemDescriptor.itemDescriptorName" content="configurableSku"/> <meta name="atg:date:childSKUs.creationDate" content="988311239"/> <meta name="atg:float:childSKUs.listPrice" content="0.0"/> <meta name="atg:boolean:childSKUs.onSale" content="false"/> <meta name="atg:string:childSKUs.$url" content="atgrep:/CustomProductCatalog/configurableSku/sku10004?\ catalog=300004&locale=en_US"/> <meta name="atg:string,index:childSKUs.$baseUrl" content="atgrep:/CustomProductCatalog/configurableSku/sku10004"/> </head> <body> <div class="atg:role:displayName" id="0"> Wheel Cylinder </div> <div class="atg:role:description" id="1"> Fits GM vehicles </div> <div class="atg:role:longDescription" id="2"> Kawaf wheel cylinders are designed to replace OEM parts. Available for a variety of applications. </div> <div class="atg:role:keywords" id="3"> wheel cylinder </div> <div class="atg:role:parentCategory.displayName" id="4"> Drum Components </div> <div class="atg:role:childSKUs.displayName" id="5"> wheel cylinder, GM </div> <div class="atg:role:childSKUs.listPrice" id="6"> 0.0 </div> </body> </html>
