Enabling hierarchical record search

If you want to consider ancestor managed attribute values when matching a record search query, you can enable hierarchical record search.

By default, a record search that uses a managed attribute as the search key returns only those records that are assigned an attribute value whose text matches the search terms. As part of this behavior, record search does not consider implicit ancestor attribute values.

For example, consider the following managed attributes hierarchy:

In this hierarchy, the Jersey attribute (with an ID of 12) is an ancestor of the Sleeveless attribute (ID of 13). A search against the Clothing attribute for the keyword sleeveless matches any records assigned the attribute value 13. But a search in Clothing for sleeveless jersey does not match these records, because record search does not normally consider implicit ancestor attribute value assignments.

In such cases, you may want record search to consider ancestor attribute values when matching a record search query. You can enable this sort of hierarchical record search by setting the mdex-dimension_IsRecordSearchHierarchical attribute to true in the managed attribute's DDR (Dimension Description Record).