The Spelling Correction and Did You Mean features of the Oracle Commerce MDEX Engine enable search queries to return expected results when the spelling used in query terms does not match the spelling used in the result text (that is, when the user misspells search terms).

Spelling Correction operates by computing alternate spellings for user query terms, evaluating the likelihood that these alternate spellings are the best interpretation, and then using the best alternate spell-corrected query forms to return extra search results. For example, a user might search for records containing the text Abrham Lincoln. With spelling correction enabled, the Oracle Commerce MDEX Engine will return the expected results: those containing the text Abraham Lincoln.

The list of alternate spellings that can be used for spelling correction is known as the spelling dictionary.

Did You Mean (DYM) functionality enables an application to suggest alternatives to search terms that users enter. For example, if users search for valle in the sample wine data, they get six results. The terms valley and vale, however, are much more prevalent (2,414 results and 20 results respectively.) When this feature is enabled, the MDEX Engine responds with the six results for valle, but also suggests that valley or vale may be what the user intended. If multiple suggestions are returned, they are sorted and presented according to the closeness of the match.

The Oracle Commerce MDEX Engine supports two complementary forms of Spelling Correction:

Either or both features can be used in a single application, and all are supported by the same underlying spelling engine and Spelling Correction modules.

The behavior of Oracle Commerce spelling correction features is application-aware, because the spelling dictionary for a given data set is derived directly from the indexed source text, populated with the words found in all searchable dimension values and properties. For example, in a set of records containing computer equipment, a search for graphi might spell-correct to graphics. In a different data set for sporting equipment, the same search might spell-correct to graphite.

Oracle Commerce Spelling Correction features include a number of tuning parameters to control performance, behavior, and result presentation. This section describes the steps necessary to enable spelling correction for record and/or dimension search, and provides a reference to the tuning parameters provided to allow applications to obtain various behavior and performance trade-offs from the spelling engine.


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