Workspaces in WebSphere Commerce search

Business users work on catalog-related changes in an isolated environment when working with workspaces in WebSphere Commerce search. They can then preview their changes in the storefront before submitting them for approval. Content approvers or workspace managers then use the Workspace Management tool in the Management Center to preview a workspace, undo submitted tasks, reject, cancel, or approve task groups. A task group is scheduled for publishing after it is approved.

Note: Prior to Feature Pack 5, the search index was not aware of non-approved updates in workspaces. Therefore, actions in store preview that required data from the search index were retrieved only from the base schema. That is, only approved content is displayed in store preview.

A separate search index is created for each allocated workspace to preview non-approved changes in a search-based navigation storefront in an authoring environment. This workspace search index has an identical schema structure as the base (also known as approved content) search index. However, the workspace search index contains only non-approved changes for the workspace. The approach is similar to the database write schema used for each workspace.

When updates are made in a workspace for a product, a search index record copy with the required update is added to the workspace search index. During store preview, the search runtime switches to a workspace index reader capable of overlaying the workspace search index over the approved content search index. Business users then preview non-approved tasks in workspaces. After the task group is approved, the base search index starts re-indexing while the workspace index is cleaned to dispose of approved content from the task group.

WebSphere Commerce search utilities work with search indexes and workspace indexes with the following utilities:

Search index setup utility: Configures the Solr cores by creating all core instances for the specified master catalog.; Workspace cores are either created for all available workspaces, including non-allocated workspaces, or only for allocated workspaces.
Search index preprocess utility: Prepares your WebSphere Commerce data for indexing.; Preprocessing targets the search index and workspace index.
Search index build utility: Updates the information in the Master Index by using the Data Import Handler (DIH) service to build the index. The index is built either partially through delta index updates, or completely through full index builds.; Index building targets the search index and workspace index.

The Data Import Handler (DIH) accesses the workspace read schema to populate the workspace core. This behavior is configured in the wc-data-config.xml file.

The workspace index reader then combines the results from the workspace core and the production-ready core. This behavior is configured in the solrconfig.xml file.

WebSphere Commerce search workspaces overall flow

The following list highlights the high-level task flow for working with workspaces in WebSphere Commerce:

IT administrators enable workspaces, either with the Configuration Manager or by running the enableContentManagement script, to prime the workspace database schemas.
Business users create workspaces in the Workspace Management tool in Management Center.
IT administrators run the setupSearchIndex command to create search cores for the allocated workspace. If the authoring environment is clustered, all the search subordinate servers must be updated with the new workspace core.
Business users view the workspace index in store preview for viewing unapproved content. A task group is scheduled for publishing after it is approved.

WebSphere Commerce search tasks with workspaces

The tasks performed when managing search are typically run on a regular basis, or on schedule. They include: setting up your WebSphere Commerce search index structure, preparing your data for indexing by preprocessing, and indexing the data either partially through delta index updates or completely through full index builds.

These tasks include additional parameters to support working with the WebSphere Commerce workspace schema. For example:

The setup search index utility contains parameters to pass DBA user credentials to access the read and write schemas. It also contains a parameter to create cores for all available workspaces, including non-allocated workspaces. For more information, see Setting up the search index.
The di-preprocess utility requires the database user be granted cross-schema privileges to create and drop tables. Otherwise, you cannot preview changes made in workspaces. For more information, see Preprocessing the WebSphere Commerce search index data.
The di-buildindex utility contains a parameter to pass a workspace identifier to process a specific workspace schema. For more information, see Building the WebSphere Commerce search index.

Synchronizing changes between the base index and workspace index

Temporary database tables are used to detect and synchronize changes between the base index and workspace index.

The following temporary database tables store changes waiting to be indexed for each workspace:

TI_DELTA_CATENTRY
TI_DELTA_CATGROUP

The following temporary tables store all changed records for each workspace:

TI_CATENTRY_WS
TI_CATGROUP_WS

The temporary database tables with _WS are used to track the workspace history. They check the content contained in the workspace index and act as an overlay to track the delta changes of the workspace.