Oracle Endeca Getting Started

Mandar Shinde

12 Apr 2012

Backbone for all Oracle Endeca Solution is Oracle Endeca Server (formerly Endeca MDEX) which is used as indexing and query engine.

What Is Oracle Endeca & Where it is used

Endeca is a Information Access & Search Platform

Endeca for B2B eCommerce

Endeca for Web Site Search

Endeca for Product Data Navigation, etc.

Oracle Endeca Different Components

Endeca Information Transformation Layer (ITL)
Oracle Endeca Server (Formerly Endeca MDEX)
Oracle Endeca Presentation API

ITL is highlighted with dark color because it’s offline process where as Oracle Endeca Server and Oracle Endeca Presentation API is online process.

Understanding Different Components

Technical Overview

For this explanation we are considering source data as Flat File to ITL process. But it’s not just limited to that. Oracle Endeca accepts any of the following formats till date.

Forge in action: Once the data is in the ITL process Forge maps the source data to Oracle Endeca Properties and Dimension along with all configuration applied that were developed using Developer Studio.

Dgidx in action: Once data is forged, dgidx index the data and converts it to Endeca records which are finally given to Dgraph.

Dgraph in action: Once Oracle Endeca records are ready, enjoy ease and smooth Navigation and Search experience by query Oracle Endeca Server.

Records, Dimension and Properties

Records

Endeca records are the entities in your data set that users are navigating to or searching for. Below image show endeca record information

Dimensions

Dimensions provide the logical structure for organizing the records in your data set. For example below categories are user to narrow down the result to specific product user is looking for.

Properties

§ Properties mostly contain detail about a record than the higher-level dimension values used for navigation.

Guided Navigation

Guided Navigation is the presentation of valid follow-on refinement queries to the user.
You can think of Guided Navigation as the elimination of invalid refinement queries, or dead ends.

An example below shows when user navigates to Carpet Kit. User still has options to navigate to more targeted records he is looking for. Here user can further drill down on Brand, Price, etc.