SmartTarget Region and Query relationship?

Question

Per the SDL SmartTarget 2014 documentation, tcdl queries appear in regions.

<tcdl:region>
  <tcdl:query>
   <tcdl:facet />
   <tcdl:item />    
   <tcdl:search />
   <tcdl:attribute />
   <tcdl:promotions />
   <tcdl:navigation />
  <tcdl:items />                                
 </tcdl:query>
</tcdl:region>

Example:

<tcdl:region id="Sidebar" type="SmartTarget"> 
  <tcdl:query publication='tcm:0-1-1'> 
    <tcdl:facet category='tcm:1-3-4' /> 
    <tcdl:promotions region='Sidebar' maxItems='5'> 
    ...
    </tcdl:promotions> 
</tcdl:query> 

What's the (ordinal) relationship between regions and queries?

1. Is it a 1:1 (one-to-one) relationship?
2. If not, does each region need a query?

3. Must a query appear within a region (i.e. can queries be added elsewhere on a page?

4. In the example, does the Sidebar in <tcdl:promotions region='Sidebar' maxItems='5'> represent the Sidebar id in <tcdl:region id="Sidebar" type="SmartTarget">?

For SmartTarget functional requirements I think we can document region and query requirements together, but I want to be sure.

If regions always have a query, then at least functionally, a region would be:

• Name (Id)
• Publication
• Allow Duplicates (Y/N)
• Timeout (milliseconds)
• View (not supported, but would be one of: lister, detail, search, home, summary, compare)
• Redirect (T/F)

Plus additional SmartTarget functionality for that region (e.g. search, navigation, promotions, etc).

Answer 1

Queries are independent of regions and can appear outside of them; but the TBBs will only support adding them to regions. That's mostly because there are not many ways to programmatically determine where in the HTML to place something -- so it requires you to mark those areas with a region for easy access.

You can have multiple regions with Promotions inside a single query. In fact, it is recommended to have a single query per web page if at all possible.

Typically when using the TBBs that would mean having a "query region" on the outside (say, immediately inside the body element in the HTML) and one or more Promotion regions on the inside. A "query region" would not need to be available for Promotions, so you don't need to have them in your configuration -- they just need to be in the template output.

As for your 4th question: yes, Sidebar means the same thing in all of those cases.