What is Search Flattening and When Should It Be Used?

CrafterCMS indexes content into OpenSearch to support search and sophisticated query use cases. As part of its indexing behaviors, CrafterCMS can combine or flatten child content into parent content within the OpenSearch index to create a single record that can be addressed in one query. This would otherwise be multiple index records and would likely require multiple queries. This behavior is (unsurprisingly) called Search Flattening.

This behavior can be very beneficial but it in some cases it in not the appropriate behavior for the use case and can lead to large index records, performance issues and operational errors.  Check out the video below to learn more about what Search Flattening is, when to use it and how to configure it.