Multi-select refinements and the user interface

If an attribute is configured as multi-and or multi-or, this affects the way the Endeca Server calculates the refinements for such attributes, and therefore, has implications for the display of such refinements in the user interface.

The default Guided Navigation behavior of the Oracle Endeca Server is to allow users to add only a single value from an attribute to the navigation state. This means that when users select a refinement from an attribute (by clicking it in the user interface, in the list of suggested refinements), that attribute is removed from the list of suggested refinements available for future refinement in the query results. For example, after selecting "Apple" from the Flavors attribute, the Flavors attribute is removed from the user interface's navigation controls. However, sometimes it is useful at navigation time to allow the user to select more than one value from an attribute. For example, the user interface can provide a user with the ability to show wines that have both "Apple" and "Apricot" values from the "Flavor" attribute.

To summarize, even though the fact that an attribute is tagged as multi-select is transparent to the front-end application's developer, the behavior of multi-select attributes may require changes in the user interface. Once an attribute is tagged as multi-select, the semantics of how the Oracle Endeca Server interprets navigation queries and returns available refinements changes. After tagging an attribute as multi-select, the Endeca Server allows multiple attribute values from the same attribute to be added to the navigation state. The Endeca Server behaves differently for the two types of multi-select attributes: