The Presentation API enables Web based Guided Search applications to communicate with the MDEX Engine.
The online portion of a typical Guided Search application has the following components:
The MDEX Engine, which receives and processes query requests.
The Presentation API, which you use to query the MDEX Engine and manipulate the query results.
A Web application in the form of a set of application modules, which receive client requests and pass them to the MDEX Engine through the Presentation API.
The following diagram illustrates the data flow between these components for a typical Guided Search application that uses the Presentation API:
In this diagram, the following actions take place:
The Web application server receives the request and passes it to the application modules.
The application modules pass the request to the MDEX Engine, by means of the Presentation API.
The application modules use Presentation API method calls to retrieve and manipulate the query results.
The application modules format the query results and return them to the client browser, through the Web application server.
Note
For security reasons, you should never enable Web browsers to connect directly to your MDEX Engine. Browsers should always connect to your application through an application server.
