Commerce+ Solr and Elasticesearch

In keeping with HCL's commitment to current and open standards, Commerce Search uses Apache Lucene as the basis of its Search framework. Lucene powers the Apache Solr search engine and the Elasticsearch search engine. The indexing pipeline is a more open, flexible and scalable and is tightly integrated with the data service. Using the underlying dataflow technology and architecture, you can easily customize the pipelines. This open-standards approach considerably eases the process of integrating Search with existing and third-party applications.

Business benefits

Some of the business benefits that are provided by Commerce Search are,
  • Shoppers can look for products and browse the storefront by using an intuitive and highly responsive interface that can anticipate their needs. Basic functions include guided navigation, landing pages, and dynamic merchandising suggestions.
  • Merchandisers can influence product selection and display order for category navigation using the Management Center Catalogs tool and they can set up boost/bury rules for influencing search results using the Search Rules feature in the Marketing tool.
  • Relevant content is easier to find because the Search system uses a combination of relational database and unstructured text-searching modules.
  • Search runs in its own container, and if you use the advanced architecture of the Commerce+ Data Services, you can take advantage of the latest microservices to gain fine control over search and analytics. Large numbers of complex search queries can run in parallel with order processing with no degradation in response time. Scalability is not a problem.
  • Deployment and ownership costs are lower, since all of these capabilities come included with Commerce+.

Solr Elasticsearch feature comparison matrix

The following table depicts the feature comparison between Commerce+ search solution based on solr search and Elasticsearch.
Note: In the following table "x" means the feature is supported.
Feature name Commerce+ Solr Search Commerce+ Elasticsearch
Indexing
Full Re-indexing x x
Partial / Delta Index update x
Near realtime Index update x
Extensible Ingest pipeline x
In-memory data flattening/transformation x
Ingest pipeline monitoring dashboard x
Customization
Visual flow programming tool for Ingestion x
Lighweight development tools x
Open source application components x x
Loosely coupled search application architecture x
API-based configuration x
Search results ranking / relevancy
Natural language processing x
Color matchmaker x
Dimension / Measurement matchmaker x
Range filter x
Unit of measure filter x
Workspaces x x
Tools to manage SEO URLs x x
Search rules (boost/bury, product pinning, change search criteria) x x
Search term associations (synonyms, replacements, landing pages) x x
Web activities (search triggers/targets) x x
Storefront experience
Facetedsearch / navigation x x
Product variants (3-Tier) x x
Catalog filter/Product entitlement x x
Price rules x x
Price mode x
Commerce+ platform language support x x
Language fallback x x
Commerce+ support for Natural Language x*
Result grouping (visual relevancy) x x
Configurable autosuggest/type-ahead x x
Search term highlighting x x
Stopwords x x
Synonyms txt file x
Sales catalogs x x
Performance
Caching/Invalidation x x
* The natural languages that are supported are English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, and Arabic.

User roles that interact with Commerce Search

The following user roles interact with Commerce Search:
  • Store developers who want to deliver powerful search-based catalog browsing flows.
  • Site Administrators who want to deploy, manage, and maintain Commerce Search implementations.
  • Merchandisers who want to influence search results by using the Management center.

Finding Commerce Search documentation

The following entry points in the Commerce+ help center exist for the main focus areas in Commerce Search:
Commerce Search documentation
Concept Details and audience For more information
Introduction Learn about Commerce Search and how it is integrated within Commerce+.

This information is intended for any Commerce+ role responsible for researching Commerce Search.
Tutorials Learn about Commerce Search by completing tutorials.

This information is intended for any Commerce+ role responsible for researching Commerce Search.
Storefront features Learn about the cross-channel starter stores that take advantage of Commerce search, including the ability to search by voice in mobile starter stores.

This information is intended for storefront developers responsible for deploying Commerce+ search-enabled starter stores.
Index lifecycle Learn about the index lifecycle in Commerce Search and how Site administrators and business users can play potential roles in updating the search index to meet their business needs.

This information is intended for Site Administrators responsible for administering Commerce Search.
Search relevancy Learn about tuning search relevancy, so that customers can find products more efficiently.

This information is intended for Business Users and Site Administrators who are responsible for influencing search results in starter stores.

 Overview:Search term management: Search relevancy configuration:Auto-suggestion:
Search merchandising Learn about merchandising the store catalog so that you can personalize the storefront with content that is more relevant to the target audience.

This information is intended for Business Users who are responsible for influencing search results and product listings to maximize conversion.

 Overview:Landing pages:Catalog, Ruled Based Sales Categories, and facet management - Catalog Administrators:Merchandising rules:
Customization Learn about the customization points in Commerce Search and how they can be used in your implementation.

This information is intended for Commerce+ developers responsible for customizing Commerce Search.
Migration Learn about the capabilities of Commerce Search, and how its functions can be upgraded between Feature Packs. By default, Commerce+ uses Elasticsearch. You can revert back to the Solr search engine if that is your preference.

This information is intended for Site Administrators responsible for migrating their Commerce Search implementation to a newer feature pack.
Performance tuning Learn about how to tune and optimize your Commerce Search implementation to meet your business needs.

This information is intended for Site Administrators responsible for tuning Commerce Search.
Troubleshooting If you encounter problems while you use Commerce Search, refer to the troubleshooting information to help determine the problem and find possible solutions.

Successfully troubleshooting issues helps reduce complexity when you encounter errors in Commerce Search.

This information is intended for Site Administrators responsible for troubleshooting issues with Commerce Search.
Pricing Learn about how to index different pricing models in Commerce+ search.

This information is intended for Site Administrators responsible for configuring Commerce Search.