Content Selection Pipeline
The Content Selection pipeline runs components that gather, filter, score, and select content. This pipeline is often used to select ads or discounts.
The Content Selection pipeline consists of the following stages:
Load Context Stage
Filter Stage
Initial Score Stage
Scoring Stage
Select Stage
Record Stage
Format Stage
Load Context Stage
This stage contains components that prepare for the execution of the rest of the pipeline.
The components related to this stage are shown in the following table.
| Component | Description |
| InitCSFPipeline | Initializes values needed in the remainder of the pipeline. |
| LoadHistory | Retrieves a history string from a user profile, an item in the Active Server Pages (ASP) session collection, or a cookie. |
Filter Stage
This stage contains components that filter or trim the content list.
The components related to this stage are shown in the following table.
| Component | Description |
| FilterContent | Applies provided filters to the content list. |
Initial Score Stage
This stage sets an initial score for each content item.
The components related to this stage are shown in the following table.
| Component | Description |
| AdvertisingNeedOfDelivery | Scores ads so that they are selected often enough to meet business commitments. |
Scoring Stage
This stage contains components that adjust the scores of each content item.
The components related to this stage are shown in the following table.
| Component | Description |
| EvalTargetGroups | Targets particular groups for advertising, content, or discounts by evaluating a list of expressions for each item in a list and adjusting item selection. |
| HistoryPenalty | Applies penalties to content items based on how recently they have been selected. |
| ScoreDiscounts | Adjusts scores of discount items to promote discounts most relevant to the current user. |
Select Stage
This stage, usually containing a single component, selects one or more content items for return.
The components related to this stage are shown in the following table.
| Component | Description |
| SelectWinners | Selects items based on their final scores. |
Record Stage
This stage contains components that record the selection made to a database, the server log file, or a history string.
The components related to this stage are shown in the following table.
| Component | Description |
| IISAppendToLog | Records information about content selection results in the QueryString field of the Internet Information Services (IIS) log file. |
| RecordEvent | Records event delta counts for the selected content items (the winners) in the Performance dictionary. The values are used to calculate the need of delivery of an item. |
| RecordHistory | Records the identifiers of the winning content items in the history list string. |
| SaveHistory | Saves the history string in one of three locations: the user profile object, the ASP session collection, or the HTTP cookie. |
Format Stage
This stage contains components that format selected items as HTML or XML for return to the page that ran the pipeline.
The components related to this stage are shown in the following table.
| Component | Description |
| FormatTemplate | Merges data from selected items with their associated templates to form formatted strings. These are usually HTML strings ready for display on the page. |