Architecture overview
This topic explains the key architectural components in a typical Sitecore Search implementation.
The following diagram illustrates these components and how they interact with each other.
Sources
Administrators define content sources such as structured feeds, APIs, or supported platforms. These sources serve as the bridge to index data into Sitecore Search from customers/external sources to Search storages.
Connectors
Administrators set up connectors that create searchable content from the external sources by crawling through them.
Content collection
All indexed content is stored in a Content Collection. Your search queries will return results from this indexed dataset, not from the original source.
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Attributes - you define key-value pairs associated with the indexed content such as category, language, or brand. You’ll use these in queries for filtering, faceting, or sorting results.
The Sitecore Search user interface
The interface that developers use to configure settings to create and refine the search experience. It is developed with both the technical and the marketer/merchandiser persona in mind.
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Pages, widgets, and features - administrators configure search experiences using pages, widgets, and features like facets, filtering, sorting, and so on. For example, they can create a landing page, add a preview search widget, and use synonyms to correct common typos. As a developer, you reference these pages and widgets by their IDs when integrating them into your site.
APIs
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Search and Recommendations API - the API that’s triggered when the user makes a search query from the search bar.
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Ingestion API - the API that makes incremental updates to indexes. This is to ensure that updated data from the actual sources is reflected in your index documents.
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Events API - the API that sends analytics data from widgets/pages back to Sitecore Search based on user interactions to drive personalization.
Front end
This is the website where users enter search queries, interact with the search experiences like autocomplete, Q&A, recommendations, and so on. It essentially displays the result of your configured search experience.
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SDK - developers can use SDKs or the REST APIs to integrate their website with Sitecore Search. Using the SDKs provides a better developer experience compared to the REST APIs.