Performance impact of value search

This topic discusses value search and its impact on Oracle Endeca Server performance.

Limit value search scope and the number of returned results

If you submit a value search query, the query is generally very fast. The runtime performance of value search directly corresponds to the number of values and the size of the resulting set of matching values. In general, this feature performs at a much higher number of operations per second than navigation requests. The most common performance problem is when the resulting set of values is exceptionally large (greater than 1,000), thus creating a large results page. To avoid it, limit the number of results per request, using value search parameters.

The query will be faster if you limit the scope and the number or results returned. You can do this using the options for configuring search configurations and Type-ahead suggestions of the Search Box component in Studio.

Decide which attributes to make value searchable

All managed attributes are always value searchable (you cannot toggle the value search setting for them). In addition, standard attributes of type string can be made value searchable. The IsPropertyValueSearchable attribute on the PDR controls whether the attribute in your record set is enabled for value search.

Before changing a value search setting for an attribute, examine your data to decide which of the attributes in your record set need to be value searchable. Next, turn off value search for attributes you will not be using for navigation, such as those standard attributes that contain long chunks of text.