This guide will help you understand the basic Endeca concepts + developing cartridges and some customization.

1. Oracle Endeca
Introduction to Assembler Application & Cartridges
- Keyur Shah (http://www.linkedin.com/in/keyurkshah)
Note: Source for some of the images is Oracle Endeca Documentation

2. Endeca Component Interaction

3. Endeca Component Interaction - 2
Offline processing
raw data sources
Endeca ITL
Endeca
MDEX Engine
Endeca
Application Tier
Online processing
Your
Application
User’s Browser

4. Endeca Pipeline
 The end result is an Endeca index which possesses
enriched source data and enhanced search and
Guided Navigation capabilities
Loading
Data
Caching &
Joining Data
Manipulating Data
Dimension
Mapping
The Endeca pipeline

5. Endeca Index Architecture
Crawl
Website
Configuration
Content
Database & File System
Indexing
MDEX Dgraph / Index
Console
WSDL
CMS
Connector
File System
JDBC
Merge
Record Store
Record Store
MDEX
Compatibl
e Output
Dimension
Mapping
Manipulators
Document
Conversion
Content Acquisition System
Custom

6. ATG-Endeca Integration
Endeca Content
Acquisition
System
Product
Record Store
Dimension
Record Store
ATG Web Commerce
Product Exporter
Category Exporter
Schema Exporter Schema
Record Store
Endeca
Application
Controller
Endeca ITL Endeca MDEX
Configuration
Forge
Web Application
Product Catalog
Indexing Admin
ATG Deployment
Template
Module
Endeca
Configuration
 Publish Product Catalog Assets to Endeca Records
 Publish Categories to Endeca Dimensions
 Publish Schema Metadata from ATG Web Commerce
to Endeca
 Operational Support

7. MDEX Engine
The MDEX Engine uses proprietary data structures and algorithms that allow it
to provide real-time responses to client requests. The MDEX Engine stores the
indices that were created the Dgidx indexing program. After the indices are
stored, the MDEX Engine receives client requests via the application tier,
queries the indices, and then returns the results.
The two primary components of the MDEX Engine package are the following:
• Dgraph • Dgidx
MDEX engine is designed to be stateless.

8. Overview of CAS & Crawler

9. Endeca – Type of Pages
 Site may have 3 basic page types:

10. Page Structure & Content Type

11. Templates & Cartridges Work
Together

12. Cartridge Structure

13. Endeca Assembler Application
 The Endeca Assembler application enables a
WEB application to query the MDEX Engine and
retrieve the appropriate dynamic content based
on user’s navigation state or other triggers
 The Assembler application provides a RESTful web
service API that returns results either in JSON or
XML.
 The Assembler API is powered by Java, but the
query interface is language-agnostic web service

14. Example of JSON Returned
by Assembler Application

15. Example of JSON
http://localhost:8006/discover/?format=json
Explicitly
retrieve JSON
from Assembler
Open the JSON
in Notepad++
Download the
JSON Viewer
for Notepad++

16. JSON Viewer in Notepad++
 You can download the JSON Viewer for Notepad++ from Sourceforge
 http://sourceforge.net/projects/nppjsonviewer/?source=dlp
 Unzip the download
 This plugin is meant to display a JSON string in a Treeview. It also marks the error
position in case of parsing errors.
 Thats it!!!
============Instruction:============
1. Paste the file "NPPJSONViewer.dll" to Notepad++ plugin folder
2. open a document containing a JSON string
3. Select JSON fragment and navigate to plugins/JSON Viewer/show JSON Viewer or
press "Ctrl+Alt+Shift+J"

17. Cartridge Creation Workflow
Review
As we have seen, the high-level workflow for creating a basic
cartridge is:
 1. Create a cartridge template and upload it to Endeca
Workbench
 2. Use Experience Manager to create and configure and
instance of the cartridge
 3. Add a renderer to the front-end application
FOR DEVELOPERS
Step 2 is necessary during development in order to have a
cartridge instance with which to test.
However, once the cartridge is complete, the business user is
typically responsible for creating and maintaining cartridge
instances in Experience Manager.

18. Endeca Content & Indexing

19. What Happens @ Runtime?
 The Assembler retrieves this configuration at runtime
and uses it to build the response model that it returns to
the client application.

20. How does it
all work?

21. Hello Cartridge - Example
To create and configure a basic “Hello cartridge”:
Create a cartridge template
1. Open a new plain text or XML file
2. Type or copy the following contents to the file (with .xml extension)
3. Save the file into C:EndecaAppsDiscoverconfigcartridge_templates folder

22. Hello World Cartridge – Example
(Cont’d)
<ContentTemplate xmlns="http://endeca.com/schema/content-template/2008" xmlns:editors="editors" type=“SecondaryContent" id="Hello">
<Description>A sample cartridge that can display a simple message.</Description>
<ThumbnailUrl>/ifcr/tools/xmgr/img/template_thumbnails/sidebar_content.jpg</ThumbnailUrl>
<ContentItem>
<Name>Hello cartridge</Name>
<Property name="message">
<String />
</Property>
<Property name="messageColor">
<String />
</Property>
</ContentItem>
<EditorPanel>
<BasicContentItemEditor>
<editors:StringEditor propertyName="message" label="Message" />
<editors:StringEditor propertyName="messageColor" label="Color" />
</BasicContentItemEditor>
</EditorPanel>
</ContentTemplate>
Save the file into
C:EndecaAppsDiscoverconfig
cartridge_templates folder

23. Save & Upload Cartridge

24. Add a Cartridge to a Page
(Experience Manager)

25. Workbench & Experience Manager

26. “Add/Change” for Cartridge
Selector

27. Add New “RightContent”
1
2
3
4

28. New RightContent Added
“Hello Cartridge”
Add the custom “Message” and “Color” values followed
by clicking on the “SAVE CHANGES” BUTTON (right top)

29. Review the Changes in
Discover Authoring
Right Content
Top Related
Products
Hello
The error displays because we have not yet created a renderer for the Hello cartridge.
http://localhost:8006/discover-authoring

30. Viewing the JSON for Cartridge
Verification
 At the footer of the discover authoring default page, you
should see couple of interesting links “json” and “xml”
 You can click on JSON or XML link to view the MDEX response
(content type + content) to the page request
 Clicking on “json” – you will be
able to view the page
response in json format
 Goto the bottom of JSON
response or search “Hello” in
the response
 You will be able to confirm the
presence of Hello Cartridge

31. Hello.JSP – Bring It All Together
Adding the Basic Renderer
 Endeca application have no way to render the content to the front-
end (Either JSON or XML or Custom XML)
 Create a new JSP file (Hello.jsp) in the
C:EndecaToolsAndFrameworks3.1.2referencediscover-
electronics-authoringWEB-INFviewsdesktopHello folder (You need
to create the Hello folder)
<%@page language="java" pageEncoding="UTF-8" contentType="text/html;charset=UTF-
8"%>
<%@include file="/WEB-INF/views/include.jsp"%>
<div style="border-style: dotted; border-width: 1px;
border-color: #999999; padding: 10px 10px">
<div style="font-size: 150%;
color: ${component.messageColor}">${component.message}
</div>
</div>
Color-
coded
For your
copy-paste
purpose

32. Testing the Hello.jsp
 Once you have created the JSP and dropped in the Hello folder as
described in previous slide, you are ready to test the changes
 Just refresh the Discover authoring home page
http://localhost:8006/discover-authoring , and you should be able to
see the Hello World! Message as defined in the experience manager

33. Customize Cartridge Editor

34. Experience Manager Impact
Cartridge Editor Customization
 Previous
 Now

35. Save & Confirm Changes
In Authoring View

36. Customize Thumbnail Image
Custom Image & Dimension
 Create a custom JPG image in your favorite image tool
e.g. You can use Windows paint application
 Images are typically of 81x81 dimension in Experience
Manager (below are examples of default images)

37.  You can copy/save the custom thumbnail image on
your web or image server
 For this example, We are saving the image to below
folder
Customize Thumbnail Image
(Cont’d) – Common Location

38. Customize Thumbnail Image
(Cont’d) – Modify the Cartridge XML
We have commented the default ThumbnailUrl
TAG, and customized the ThumbnailUrl TAG to
use the Hello.jpg from the images folder where
we saved this file in previous slide
NOTE: Remember to run the set_templates script in Control folder

39. Customize Thumbnail Image
(Cont’d) – Verify the changes