WebCenter Content Web Search Performance: Do you really need that folder path info?

End-users want content at their fingertips at the speed of thought if possible. When running search operations in the WebCenter Conter Web Interface every second or fraction of a second improvement does matter. When doing some trace analysis on the systemdatabase tracing on a customer environment, we came across some SQL queries that were unnecessarily being triggered! These were related to determining the folder path for every entry part of the search result set. However, this folder path was not even being used as part of the displayed information in the user interface.

Why was the folder path information being collected when it was not even displayed in the UI? We found that the configuration parameter 'FolderPathInSearchResults' was set to 'true' under Administration > Admin Server > General Configuration > Additional Configuration Variables as shown below:



When executing a quicksearch by keyword we were getting 100 out of 2280 entries in the first page of the result set.



When thera 'FolderPathInSearchResults' configuration parameter is set to 'true', the following queries appear in the systemdatabase tracing:

100 executions for a query on the FolderFiles table for each of the documents displayed in the first page:

>systemdatabase/6       12.13 11:17:48.188      IdcServer-199   1.45 ms. SELECT * FROM FolderFiles WHERE dDocName='SLC02VGVUSORAC140641' AND fLinkRank=0[Executed. Returned row(s): true]

382 executions for a query of the folders tables - most of the documents that match the keyword criteria are at a folder depth level of three or four:

>systemdatabase/6       12.13 11:17:48.114      IdcServer-199   2.57 ms. SELECT FolderFolders.*,FolderMetaDefaults.* FROM FolderFolders,FolderMetaDefaults WHERE FolderFolders.fFolderGUID=FolderMetaDefaults.fFolderGUID(+) AND((FolderFolders.fFolderGUID = '1EB8E527E19B09ED3FE82EE310AEA13A' ) )[Executed.
Returned row(s): true]

By setting this 'FolderPathInSearchResults' configuration parameter to 'false', the above queries were no longer reported in the Server Output System Audit Information.

Now, let's consider a practical scenario:
Search result set page = 100
Average folder depth der document in the search result set: 5

The number of folder path related queries will be: 100 + 5*500 = 600
If each query takes slightly over 3 ms. You would have 2000 ms (2 seconds) spent in server time to get this information.



The overall performance impact goes beyond seerver time execution, as this information needs to travel from the server to the browser. If the documents are further nested into the folder hierarchy, additional hundreds of queries may be executed. If folder path is not being displayed in the end-user interface profile, your system may be better of with the 'FolderPathInSearchResults' configuration parameter disabled.