December, 2024 release

HCL Commerce Search limitations and restrictions

Some features of the HCL Commerce+ environment are currently not supported or have specific functional limitations. The list below reflects the current state of supported capabilities and known restrictions. Features marked as deprecated have been or will be replaced by Elastic framework methods and interfaces.

Limitations

  • Deep Search Sequencing can be done with Elasticsearch, however the sequence is based on the full master catalog as represented in the Commerce Lab, and it performs global sequencing only.
  • Deep sequencing is improved to include both category and product sequencing.
  • The Search engine does not reconstruct broken words. For example, a search for "chairs" will succeed, as will a search for "chiars." The parser recognizes the string as a single word and performs operations such as spellcheck against that word. However, a search for "cha irs" does not work, because the parser takes this string to be two words, neither of which autocorrects into a meaningful noun.
  • Software stack in all four Search containers has now been changed to OpenJDK and OpenLiberty.
  • Keyword auto-suggestion - Keyword suggestions provided through Elasticsearch-based Search API come organically from Elasticsearch and there is no contract-based entitlement filtering applied. In other words, there could be a situation where a suggested keyword may end up with an empty search result.
  • Full reindexing for all indices of the extended (e-site) store is required to reflect on the storefront linked products (from catalog asset store) for a new sales category created in the extended site (e-site) store by assigning products from the catalog asset store.
  • Only one dataload task can be performed at a time. This is because there is no multi-thread related information provided by Dataload in the TI_DELTA_CATENTRY and TI_DELTA_CATGROUP tables. NiFi uses these tables too process incremental updates for dataload.
  • Measurement/dimension matchmaker limitations:
    • For each additional language you use with the matchmaker, raise the NiFi mem_reservation and mem_limit by two gigabytes each.
    • Supports the usage of characters X or x as the dimension separator.
    • Supports only characters L, W, H as dimensions while defining dimensions for a product specification in the catalog.
    • Supports only one-dimensional, two-dimensional, and three-dimensional product searches.
    • Supports dimensional search with numeric value along with dimension keyword, such as long, wide, high. For example, 0.5m long sofa.
    • Space must be provided in between the unit of measure, dimension, and number.
  • If you change the value of a product's descriptive searchable attribute from true to false, the product will remain searchable in the storefront until you perform a full re-index.
  • The Elasticsearch-based search solution does not respect the Show facets settings in Commerce Lab for the Brand and the Price search facets. Even if you attempt to disable these facets, their values will still be returned by the storefront service.
  • Only Postgres support and Catalog Asset model indexing models is available for HCL Commerce+ Search.
  • Tier pricing cannot currently be indexed with the Elasticsearch-based Search solution. The indexed contract and offer price is only based on a quantity unit of 1.

Discontinued features

These features are no longer available in HCL Commerce+ Search.

  • Elastic no longer provides a default web crawler implementation.
  • You can no longer use the customization programming model of BOD based search on the Transaction server. This service was maintained for backwards compatibility with previous Commerce versions. You can migrate most BOD-based customizations to the Version 9 model to avoid this problem.
  • Price modes (computed, mixed) are not supported. This is a pricing mode where prices are determined at checkout-time. You cannot use these price modes to use the price adjustments from price rules. The price mode that is supported is the indexed price mode wherein all prices (list, offer, contract) are retrieved from the search index. The Ingest service copies into the product index all these prices from the price index. Once the price rule is assigned to the contract, you need to manually build the contract price index so that Ingest service can copy this into the product index and reflect the prices appropriately at the storefront. List and offer prices are indexed directly from the database tables. For more information on price rules, see Price rules: An overview.