Search and indexing overview

Version: 9.0

Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) has three search frameworks:

  • Content Search, which is used by various components primarily to search and index Sitecore items.

  • xConnect Search, which is used to search and index experience data.

  • Commerce Search, which is used to search and index customers and orders.

The following table summarizes the differences between the three search frameworks:

Content Search

xConnect Search

Commerce Search

APIs

Sitecore Content Search API

xConnect Client API

Commerce Search Service

Providers

  • Solr

  • Azure Search

  • Solr

  • Azure Search

  • Solr

  • Azure Search

Indexes

  • sitecore_core_index

  • sitecore_master_index

  • sitecore_web_index

  • sitecore_marketingdefinitions_master

  • sitecore_marketingdefinitions_web

  • sitecore_marketing_asset_index_master

  • sitecore_marketing_asset_index_web

  • sitecore_testing_index

  • sitecore_suggested_test_index

  • sitecore_fxm_master_index

  • sitecore_fxm_web_index

  • xdb

  • xdb_rebuild

  • Customer Scope index

  • Order Scope index

  • Catalog Items Scope index

Indexer

indexCrawler (run on the core Sitecore application)

xConnect Search Indexer (run as Windows Service or Web Job)

Commerce Indexing minions

Note

Many components that use the Content Search have their own API layer on top of the Content Search API. For example, the Marketing Operations API has a method for searching the sitecore_marketing_* and sitecore_marketingdefinitions_* indexes that references the Content Search API further down the stack.

In 9.0, the following indexes are no longer managed by Sitecore Content Search:

  • sitecore_list_index - replaced by the xDB Collection index

  • sitecore_analytics_index - replaced by the xDB Collection index

  • social_messages_master

  • social_messages_web

Content Search

For information about configuring content indexes, see Search and Indexing.

Note

A Lucene provider is available for Content Search. This provider can only be used in an XP/XM Single and it is not recommended or supported in production.

For more information about xConnect Search and indexing, refer to the xConnect Search Indexer documentation.

For more information about Commerce Search and indexing, see the Commerce Search plugin

Do you have some feedback for us?

If you have suggestions for improving this article,