To make data in GSA repositories available for searching, the Oracle Commerce Platform must transform the data into the appropriate format, and then submit this data to Oracle Commerce for indexing.
The process of indexing GSA repository data in Guided Search works like this:
Oracle Commerce Platform components transform the repository data into Guided Search records that represent Guided Search properties, dimensions, and schema:
Properties of GSA repository items are used to create Guided Search properties and non-hierarchical dimensions.
The hierarchy of repository item types is used to create a hierarchical dimension in Guided Search. If you index the product catalog, the category hierarchy is used to create a hierarchical category dimension.
A Guided Search schema is created by examining the set of repository item properties to be indexed.
The generated data and dimension value records are submitted to CAS record stores. The schema records are converted to the format used by the Endeca Configuration Repository and this data is submitted to it using the Configuration Import API.
The EAC application is invoked, which processes the data and invokes indexing.
This chapter gives an overview of the classes and components that perform these steps, and the user interface provided for managing the process. It focuses on the product catalog repository, but the process described here applies to indexing any GSA repository.
This chapter includes the following sections:
Other chapters of this book provide more detail about configuring and using these and other classes and components to work with the data in your Oracle Commerce Platform environment.