While you can configure any number of attributes to monitor, IBM® recommends that you configure no more than ten learning attributes between the static and dynamic learning attributes, as well as follow these guidelines.
You can manage performance by defining both the number of attributes you monitor and the number of values per attribute you monitor. The maxAttributeNames property defines the maximum number of visitor attributes you track. The
maxAttributeValues property defines the maximum number of values you track per attribute. All other values are assigned to a category defined by the value of the
otherAttributeValue property. However, the learning engine only tracks the first values it encounters. For example, you are tracking the visitor attribute eye color. You are only interested in the values blue, brown, and green, so you set
maxAttributeValues to 3. However, the first three visitors have the values blue, brown, and hazel. This means that all visitors with green eyes are assigned the
otherAttributeValue.
If you set the enablePruning property to
yes, the learning module algorithmically determines which attributes are not predictive and ceases to consider those attributes when calculating weights. For example, if you are tracking an attribute representing hair color, and the learning module determines that there is no pattern to accepting an offer based on the visitor's hair color, the learning module ceases to consider the hair color attribute. Attributes are re-evaluated every time the learning aggregation process runs (defined by the
aggregateStatsIntervalInMinutes property). Dynamic learning attributes are also pruned.