The EndecaIndexingOutputConfig components specify how to generate records from items in the catalog repository, but the generation itself is performed by data loader components. Depending on your environment, data loading may be an operation that is performed occasionally (if the content rarely changes) or frequently (if the content changes often). To be as flexible as possible, the Guided Search integration provides two approaches to loading the data:

Bulk loading and incremental loading are not mutually exclusive. For some environments, only bulk loading will be necessary, especially if content is updated only occasionally. For other environments, incremental loading will be needed to keep the search content up to date, but even in that case, you should perform a bulk load occasionally to ensure the integrity of the indexed data.

Note that Guided Search always does a baseline update after the Oracle Commerce Platform performs bulk loading, and typically does a partial update after incremental loading. In some cases, however, a baseline update may be triggered after incremental loading. For example, if incremental loading adds a new category dimension value, a baseline update must be performed. See EndecaIndexingOutputConfig Components for information about how to configure this.

The IncrementalLoader component uses an implementation of the PropertiesChangedListener interface to monitor the repository for add, update, and delete events. It then analyzes these events to determine which ones necessitate updating records, and creates a queue of the affected repository items. When a new incremental update is triggered, the IncrementalLoader processes the items in the queue, generating and loading a new record for each changed repository item.