Searching Catalogs by Using the Catalog API
For the latest version of Commerce Server 2007 Help, see the Microsoft Web site.
The catalog API provides three ways to search catalogs.
The free-text search is used to search for text values in searchable properties. When you add a property definition to your catalog, you can specify whether it is available for free-text search. The free-text search retrieves all instances of the property. For example, you can search for all products with the text "red strap" in the description.
You can use the SQL WHERE clause to search catalogs. This search provides the full support of the SQL language to search property values. For example, you can search for items with a specified price range or color.
The third search method is a guided search, also called a specifications search. With this search method you can perform a progressive search of products by specifying parameter constraints, such as a category, product, or property. To perform a specification search, you search for properties by progressively reducing the number of products that match your search criteria. Specification searches are useful when you do not want to search all of your products for a property, but you need to identify a group of products instead.
Note
When searching multiple catalogs, do not specify SkuOid as a property to return.
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Managing Catalog Definitions and Schema by Using the Catalog API