Endeca | Display Deployment Template Version

Sometimes you need to find out version of the deployment template (EAC Development Toolkit)

To show the version of deployment template.

1. Navigate to control directory of your application.

2. Invoke runcommand with --version flag.

Deployment Template Version

Endeca | Check application component status

Sometimes you need to check provisioned component status for a Endeca application. You can check application component status using one of the three ways.

1. Endeca Workbench :  Use EAC Admin console to check component status. Check Auto Refresh check box on right to refresh status automatically.

Component Status

2. Deployment Template : Run below command from control directory of deployed application.

          runcommand.bat --print-status

Component Status Deployment Template

3. The eaccmd Utility : Run below eaccmd command to check component status.

          eaccmd status --app <application name> --comp <component id>

eaccmd component status

Endeca | Monitoring Endeca components

Monitoring is the way to ensure that application components are working as expected. You can monitor Endeca components using below steps.

Monitoring Endeca components

1.  MDEX : To check the aliveness of Dgraph access : http://DgraphServerNameOrIP:DgraphPort/admin?op=ping

 For example : http://localhost:15000/admin?op=ping

This command returns light weight html : dgraph JagdevSingh-PC:15000 responding at Sat Sep 16 21:55:51 2017

 

2.  CAS : To check the aliveness of CAS access : http://CASServerNameOrIP:CASPort/cas?wsdl

For example : http://localhost:8500/cas?wsdl 

3.  EAC Central Server :To check the aliveness of EAC Central Server access : http://machine_name:8888/eac/ProvisioningService?wsdl

For example : http://localhost:8888/eac/ProvisioningService?wsdl

4.  EAC Agent  :  To check the aliveness of EAC Agent access : http://machine_name:8888/eac-agent/IDelegateServer?wsdl

For example : http://localhost:8888/eac-agent/IDelegateServer?wsdl

5.Record Store :  To check the aliveness of Record Store access : http://CASMachineNameOrIP:CASPort/<RecordStoreName>?wsdl

For example : http://localhost:8500/Discover-dimvals?wsdl

Endeca | Removing Endeca application from Workbench

Issue : In the case when you try to remove Endeca application using runcommand (runcommand --remove-app). If workbench is down at that point of time. Then this application won't be removed from workbench.

In this case runcommand throws below exception.

=============================================================================
Caused by org.apache.http.conn.HttpHostConnectException
org.apache.http.impl.conn.HttpClientConnectionOperator connect - Connect to JagdevSingh-PC:8006 [JagdevSingh-PC/127.0.0.1] failed: Connection refused: connect
Caused by java.net.ConnectException
java.net.DualStackPlainSocketImpl connect0 - Connection refused: connect
=============================================================================

In this case if you start workbench your application site will display there.

Endeca Application

Solution : Shutdown workbench, clean workbench workspace folder and restart it.

Endeca Application Removed

Endeca | Backup And Restore keyword redirects

As part of your Endeca application backup strategy. You can back up and restore keyword redirects. This method is also useful to transfer keyword redirects from one environment to other. As example here I am going to export keyword redirects from one application to another.

1. Backup (export)  keyword redirects : To backup keyword redirects,  execute below command from your application control directory. This will export keyword redirects as zip file.

syntax : runcommand.bat IFCR exportContent redirects <redirectsExportPath>

Example : runcommand.bat IFCR exportContent redirects F:\Endeca\apps\CSAen\test_data

2. Restore keyword redirects : Execute this command to import or restore keyword redirects.

syntax : runcommand.bat IFCR importContent redirects <redirectsImportPath>

Example : runcommand.bat IFCR importContent redirects F:\Endeca\apps\CSAen\test_data

Check these screen capture before and after keyword redirect import.

Before Import

After import.

After Import

Endeca | Backup And Restore thesaurus entries

As part of your Endeca application backup strategy. You can back up and restore thesaurus entries. This method is also useful to transfer thesaurus from one environment to other. As example here I am going to export thesaurus from one application to another.

1. Backup (export)  thesaurus : To backup thesaurus,  execute below command from your application control directory. This will export thesaurus as zip file.

syntax : runcommand.bat IFCR exportContent thesaurus <thesaurusExportPath>

Example : runcommand.bat IFCR exportContent thesaurus F:\Endeca\apps\CSAStagingde\config\temp\thesaurus

2. Restore thesaurus : Execute this command to import or restore thesaurus.

syntax : runcommand.bat IFCR importContent thesaurus <thesaurusImportPath>

Example : runcommand.bat IFCR importContent thesaurus F:\Endeca\apps\CSAStagingde\config\temp\thesaurus

Check these screen capture before and after thesaurus import.

Before Thesaurus Import

After importing thesaurus.

After Thesaurus Import

Endeca | Configure Stemming in CAS based application

Stemming : Stemming broadens search results to include root words and variants of root words.

For example, search results for the word truck will include the derivation trucks, while a search for trucks will also include its word root truck.

Steps to Configure Stemming : You can configure stemming manually in stemming.xml file. This file is located in <Endeca_App_Directory>/config/mdex directory. You can manually update this file. If stemming.xml does not contain an entry for a language, stemming is not enabled for that language and the default analysis is applied to that language.

In stemming.xml, the entry for a language is contained in a separate <STEMMING> element. Each subelement in the <STEMMING> element begins with STEM_language-code, where language-code identifies the language; for example, STEM_DE for German.

The subelements specify the following :

• Whether stemming is to be performed on that language.
• Whether a static wordforms file is to be used.
• Whether compound matching is to be performed.
  

For example, the following entry, for American English, specifies that stemming is to be performed using a static wordforms file, and that compound matching is not to be performed.

================================================================

<STEMMING>

<STEM_EN_US ENABLE="TRUE"
USE_COMPOUND_MATCHING="FALSE"
USE_STATIC_WORDFORMS="TRUE"/>
</STEMMING>

================================================================

Endeca | Configuring features of a CAS-based application through XML files

If you are using CAS to process your data, rather than Forge, there is a subset of application features that you must configure manually in the instance configuration XML files for an application. You cannot use Oracle Oracle Commerce Workbench or Developer Studio to configure these particular features.

The following table provides a mapping between application features and the corresponding XML file where you configure each feature. The instance configuration files are stored in <app dir>\<app name>\config\mdex.

XML Configuration Files

Endeca | Configure stop words

What is meaning of stop word in Endeca ?

Stop words are words that are ignored if an application user includes them as part of a search.Typically, common words like the, and, a and so on are included in the stop word list.

How to add stop words in CAS based application ?

Step 1 : Open application specific stop word configuration file.

This file is located at <Application Directory>/config/mdex/<Application_Name>.stop_words.xml

For example : For store application installed at /opt/app/endeca/apps/ location file will be /opt/app/endeca/apps/Store/config/mdex/Store.stop_words.xml  

Step 2 : Add stop words.

By Default there is no stop word configured.

============================================================

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
<!DOCTYPE STOP_WORDS SYSTEM "stop_words.dtd">
<STOP_WORDS>
  <STOP_WORD>of</STOP_WORD>
  <STOP_WORD>the</STOP_WORD>
  <STOP_WORD>how</STOP_WORD>
  <STOP_WORD>when</STOP_WORD>

</STOP_WORDS> 

============================================================

Step 3 : Run baseline. 

Important Points :

1. Words added to the stop word list are not expanded by other Endeca features like stemming and thesaurus. That means that if you set the word item as a stop word, its plural form items will not be marked automatically as a stop word. If you want both forms to be on the stop word list, you must add them individually. 

2. Stop words must be single words only, and cannot contain any non-searchable characters. If more than one word is entered as a stop word, neither the individual words nor the combined phrase will act as a stop word. Non-searchable characters within a stop word will also cause this behavior. Entering “full-book” as a stop word acts just as if you had entered “full book”, and does not have any effect on searches.

Endeca | Workbench configure keyword redirects

You can add keyword redirects to your application in the Keyword Redirects page in Workbench.
 

Steps to create a keyword redirect :

1. Log in to Workbench.
2. Select Keyword Redirects.
3. Click Add Redirect.The Add Keyword Redirect panel appears.

Keyword Redirect Pop Up

4. Enter an absolute or relative link in the Redirect Link field.
5. Enter a search term or terms in the User Search Terms field.
6. Select a match mode from the drop-down : 

Match Phrase - Default. A search query triggers a redirect if the search terms match in the specified
trigger terms in the same order. The search query may include additional terms before or after the
trigger terms.
Match All - A search query triggers a redirect if the search terms include all of the specified trigger
terms, but not necessarily in the same order.
Match Exact - A search query triggers a redirect only if the search terms exactly match the specified
trigger terms, in the same order, with no additional terms.
7. (Optional) Click the Add Another button and repeat Steps 5-6 to create additional search term triggers for the specified URI.

Keyword Redirect Pop Up

8. Click Save.

Each search term trigger appears in its own row in the Keyword Redirects table.

Keyword Page

You can configure multiple keywords that trigger a redirect to the same location.

Check Endeca Workbench publishing activities status

Whenever you publish changes to an application using Workbench tools such as Experience Manager, Keyword Redirects. You can check the status of these changes using Publishing Status console.

An update can have a status of Running, Success, or Failure.

Steps to open the Publishing Status console :

1. On any page in Workbench, click the status bar at the bottom of the page.The Publishing Status console appears.
2. In the Choose Application field, click a specific application or All Applications.This selection shows the status when an administrator runs the promote_content script to promote content from the authoring to the live environment.

4. Click a status line in the console to show details about the publishing action that triggered the status.
5. To toggle between ascending and descending order for the contents of that column, click a column
heading.

Publishing Status Console

MDEX Search query processing order

The MDEX Engine uses the following high-level steps to process record search queries :
 

1. Record filtering
2. Oracle Commerce Query Language (EQL) filtering
3. Tokenization
4. Auto correction (spelling correction and automatic phrasing)
5. Thesaurus expansion
6. Stemming
7. Primitive term and phrase lookup
8. Did you mean
9. Range filtering
10. Navigation filtering
11. Business rules and keyword redirects
12. Analytics
13. Relevance ranking

Note : For Boolean search queries, tokenization, auto correction, and thesaurus expansion are replaced
with a separate parsing phase.

Workbench | Export import workbench users

Sometimes you need to create similar (same set) workbench users on multiple environments (staging and production). Creating same set of users  manually on multiple environments is long process. 

You can these steps to speed up user creation process.

1. Create users manually in one environment : For example in below screen shot I added two users in workbench.

Workbench User Created

 

2. Export users using below command.

========================================================================

export_users.bat --config ..\conf\export_users.properties --output users.json

========================================================================

3. Import these exported users on destination environment.

========================================================================

 import_users.bat --input users.json --config ..\conf\import_users.properties

========================================================================

Before Import

After Import

Note :  These scripts are available at ENDECA_TOOLS_ROOT\admin\bin