: The issue is best described with an example: : search for canon - matches multiple categories, which will have very : different schemas : http://cnet.search.com/search?chkpt=astg.cnet.fd.search.cnet&q=canon&tag=srch
I just so happen to have a bit of insight into how that page works, and while it's true that it queries multiple indexes with differnet schemas, it makes no attepts to merge the results -- the "product" results come from one index, the "features" come from another, the "downloads" come from a third, the "blogs" come from a forth, etc... but all of hte "products" are from a single index, even if the products are in differnet categories (ie: cameras vs printers) they are still kept in a single index with a single schema -- but dynamicFields are used to store category specific fields, so that if you are doing a category specific search, category specific filters can be offered to you... http://shopper.cnet.com/4144-6501_9-0-1.html?query=canon : 1. Have 1 index that has ALL categories of products. Possibly 1 : generic index with all searchable text, and separate indices when you : know the categroy user is looking for. But with this ranking products : well becomes very difficult. as i said, you don't relaly need the category specific indexes ... but why do you think this approach makes "ranking products well" difficult ? -Hoss
