The enable Cross-field Matches attribute of Search Interface editor in Developer Studio specifies when the MDEX Engine should try to match search queries across dimension or property boundaries.
The three settings for enable Cross-field Matches are:
Setting |
Description |
---|---|
Always |
The MDEX Engine always looks for matches across dimension or property boundaries, in addition to matches within a dimension or property. If you choose to use cross-field matching, the Always setting is recommended and is the default. For example, in the
|
Never |
The MDEX Engine does not look across boundaries for matches. |
On Failure |
The MDEX Engine only tries to match queries across dimension or property boundaries if it fails to find any matches within a single dimension or property.
NoteIn most cases, the Always setting provides better results than the On Failure setting.
|
By default, record search queries using a search interface return the union of the results from the same record search query performed against each of the interface members.
For example, a search interface named
MoviePeople
includes
actor
and
director
properties. Searching for
deniro
against this interface returns the union of
records that results from searching for
deniro
against the
actor
property and against the
director
property.
Less frequently, you may wish to enable a match to span multiple
properties and dimensions. For example, in the same
MoviePeople
search interface, a query for
clint eastwood
returns records where either an
actor
property or a
director
property is assigned a value containing
the words
clint
and
eastwood
. This behavior is useful for this query,
where the search terms all relate to a single concept (the actor/director Clint
Eastwood).
However, in some cases returning a union of the results from the same
record search query performed against each search interface member is
unnecessarily limiting. For example, in a home electronics catalog application,
a customer searching for
Sony camera
might be interested in a broad range
of products, but this record search would return only the few products that
have the terms
Sony
and
camera in the product name.
In such cases, you can use the attribute in the Search Interface editor in Developer Studio, when you create a search interface. The enable Cross-field Matches attribute specifies when the MDEX Engine should try to match search queries across dimension or property boundaries, but within the members of the search interface.