This topic includes tips for troubleshooting record search.

Due to the user-specified interaction of this feature (as opposed to the system-controlled interaction of Guided Navigation in which the MDEX Engine controls the refinement values presented to the user), a user is enabled to submit a keyword search that does not match any records.

Therefore, it is possible for a user to make a dead-end request with zero results when using record search. Applications utilizing record search need to account for this. Even though there are objects and methods accessed from the Navigation object that enumerate search-enabled Oracle Commerce properties, these are normally used for debugging purposes that do not explicitly know this information for a given data set.

In production systems, these Oracle Commerce properties are typically hard-coded at the application level, because the application requires specific search keys to be used for specific functionality.

If an Oracle Commerce property is not enabled for record searching but an application attempts to perform a record search against this property, the MDEX Engine successfully returns a null result set.

The MDEX Engine error log, however, outputs the following message: In fulltext search: [Wed Sep 3 12:28:02 2007] [Warning] Invalid fulltext search key "Description" requested.

The -v flag to the MDEX Engine causes the MDEX Engine to output detailed information about its record search configuration. If you are unsure whether the MDEX Engine is recognizing a particular parameter, start it with the -v flag and check the output.

Finally, while implementing record search by enabling record properties for searching is the normal approach, dimension values can also be enabled for record searching. The dimension name then replaces the property key as the value for the Ntk parameter in the MDEX Engine query. The resulting navigation request contains any record that is tagged with a dimension value from the specified dimension that matches the search terms.