Understanding dimensions and dimension values is critical to building an Oracle Commerce Guided Search implementation.
Dimensions provide the logical structure for organizing the records in your data set. Your Endeca application can have many dimensions, and dimensions can be hierarchical. For example, Merlot and Chablis dimensions could be children of the Wine dimension.
Dimension values both organize the record within the tree structure of the associated dimension, and identify the record as a valid result when that dimension value is selected via a navigation query.
Dimension values can either be discrete values (as in a year, a flavor, or a price), or include ranges with an upper and lower bound (for example, the years 1990-1999, or all prices under $10).
The top-most dimension value in a dimension tree is known as the dimension root. The bottom-most dimension values in a tree are referred to as leaf dimension values.
Dimensions are often, though not always, derived automatically from source data properties.
Synonyms provide a textual way to describe a dimension value. A dimension value's definition includes one or more synonyms. Synonyms are used for display, search, and/or mapping, depending on how you set their three flags. Each of the synonym flags refers to the text that is contained in the body of the synonym element.
Note
Dimension values have synonyms, but dimensions do not.
