Developer forum

Hi Antonio

You have created facets for Brand, Price and Sub category. Then you run the facet calculation against your entire product catalog, meaning you have no other search parameters.

You have 5900 different brands, 30500 products that gives you the same number of prices, and some hundreds sub groups.

So when you execute the calculation on that, you get 5900 facet options of brands, 30000+ on prices and a couple of hundreds on your sub groups. That will always be slow and will never render in a timely manner, and no user will be able to find the right option anyway...

So - you should rethink this. If the first choice is a product category - you would limit the entire result drasticly and not get into trying to calculate that many facet options.

Facets are not meant to group by price or by any field with thousands of options - no user can use that in anyway. It makes no sense and it is slow...

If you need 5900 brands in one screen, you should load them asyncronously from a seperate feed and best if the user starts to search for a specific brand.

The underlying Lucene supports 2048 options for one facet - which is too many already. Dynamicweb handles it if you get above that number, but normally you would get an exception.

BR Nicolai

Hi Nicolai,

Thanks for tracking this down. This project in particular is an upgrade from an existing website (not DW), new design and "the whole shebang".

The facets are the same as the existing website and we cannot suggest other ones. For scenarios like this I see 2 options:

1. Somehow be able to get the Top X facets options (if that would improve performance)
2. Lazy load the facets

Do you know if option 1. is possible or could be accepted as a feature request? If not we should probably go with lazy loading the facets to get the entire options

Best Regards,

Nuno Aguiar

Hi Nicolai,

I took my time to get back to you, because I wanted it to soak in on me. This is enlightening and I see your point.

We changed a few  things and there was a huge impact:

• Created a non-analyzed field for the Manufacturer (Brands)
• Created a non-analyzed field for the Groups Names (we need them as facets - listing by parent groups)
• Created a group field for the price

So I am looking forward for the new "Term facet" and I am sure we'll use it a lot. Hope there's a way to switch between the two. I can see clients wanting a demo on how slower it gets if we activate results per facet option.

About facets vs filters part of the discussion, I honestly did not see them as two seperate things, and If I understood you correctly there is a thin line. Filters are options that have no calculations, just the raw/distinct information from the DB/index, whereas Facets have calculations associated with them.
If this is true, the new "Term facet" will basically be a Filter - a somewhat inexpensive facet we can set in the UI, is that accurate?

Best Regards,

Nuno Aguiar

Yes, there is a thin line. And it is kind of geeky, agreed.

Term Facet will be a filter - and can make you a list of 6000 brands or 100.000 composers based on a search and do it fast. But it will of course make the browser crash if you render all of them :-).

BR Nicolai

Hi Nicolai,

Of course, so as long as we can manage a limit that would relate to the Top X in a query statement, we can live with that. I doubt I'll ever get rid of 6000 brands and 100.000 composers, but as long as I can limit it, without a lot of template "ninja tricks" (like you call them ) we can do it easilly.

Looking forward for that new facet.

Best Regards,

Nuno Aguiar

Hi Nicolai,

I saw you demo the "Facet Term" on DWTC16. I was wondering when will it be available. I have a project coming up where that would be in handy. I checked and it is not available in 8.8.1.5 yet.

Best Regards,

Nuno Aguiar

It is currently on the 8.9 branch only.

It can be merged to 8.8.1...

Hi Nicolai,

I would appreciate it very much :)

Nuno Aguiar