Oracle Endeca Server

The core search-analytical database. It organizes complex and varied data from disparate source systems into a faceted data model that is extremely flexible and reduces the need for up-front data modeling. This highly-scalable server enables users to explore data in an unconstrained and impromptu manner and to rapidly address new questions that inevitably follow every new insight. Oracle Endeca Server maintains the index of records for the data domain in memory, receives queries, executes them against the stored index, and returns the results.

It is useful to recognize that the term "Endeca Server" may refer to the Endeca Server software package, and to the Endeca Server Java application hosted in the WebLogic Server. Whenever this distinction is needed, the documentation refers to the software package as "the Endeca Server", and to the Java application as the "Endeca Server Java application".

You install the Endeca Server software on Linux or Windows machines (which could be VM images or machines in a private or public cloud) that are running the WebLogic Server and that will host multiple Endeca data domains. Once the Endeca Server package is installed in the WebLogic Server, the WebLogic Server starts the Endeca Server Java application.

The Endeca Server software exposes almost all of its APIs as SOAP web services.

The Endeca Server Java application manages the data domain clusters hosted in the Endeca Server cluster. When you first install the Endeca Server package on multiple machines, it will have no data domains. You then create data domain profiles and use them to create named data domains. The Endeca Server cluster locates ports on which to start the Dgraph processes for the data domain, and identifies which Dgraph configuration flags to use. The Dgraph processes handle requests made to the data domain.

Once a data domain is created, you only need to use the name of the data domain to manage it. You don't need to know which port the Dgraph processes for the data domain are running on, as the Endeca Server keeps track of that information using its Cluster Coordinator services. This name-only reference to the data domains makes it much easier to enable and disable them and perform other data domain management operations.

The Endeca Server has a set of commands, available through endeca-cmd, with which you create and control data domains. Optionally, you can use the Web services of the Endeca Server for this purpose.

See also data domain, and Oracle Endeca Server Web services.