Relevance ranking strategies

Relevance ranking modules define the primitive search result ordering functions provided by the Oracle Endeca Server. These primitive modules can be combined to compose more complex ordering behaviors called relevance ranking strategies.

You may also define and apply a strategy that consists of a single module, rather than a group of modules.

You can specify a relevance ranking strategy either in the request issued by the Conversation Web Service, and/or in the RECSEARCH_CONFIG configuration XML document.

The scores assigned by a strategy are composed from the scores assigned by its constituent modules. This composite score is constructed so that records are first ordered by the first module. After that, ties are broken by the subsequent modules in order. If any ties remain after all modules have been consulted, they are resolved by the default sort. If after that any ties still remain, the order of records is determined by the system.

Note that the order of results returned for a query where there are multiple text searches with relevance ranking enabled in the query is that the relevance rank of a given record will be the maximum of the relevance ranks of the searches for that record.