The searchStatus field means whether a particular search was successful or not.
If the system was able to carry out a search for an individual in a specific data source then the searchStatus will be 'Successful', even if a match was not found.
On the other hand, if for some reason the search for a person was not completed, the searchStatus will be 'Unsuccessful'.
How does it relate to the 'status' field for each individual data source?
The searchStatus will be 'Successful' if the status returned is 0, 1 or 2. These correspond to Full Match, Partial Match or No Match respectively. All these three values indicate that the search was successully carried out.
If, however, the status is 3, which indicates an error at the data source's end, the searchStatus will be Unsuccessful' since the search was not finished. One of the reasons for that is temporary outage of the data source.
Note: The above explanation will be helpful when using a single data source for performing a search. In case of a composite query (using two or more data sources), the following article gives a comprehensive overview of the role of searchStatus:
What will be 'searchStatus' in case of a composite query?
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