The MantaDB Web Tool
Searching the MantaDB Database
The Search Database dialog box retrieves information about past
pages indexed by MantaDB. The MantaDB search facility can perform detailed keyword
searches on the pages you have seen - and displays the results just like an Internet search
engine.
A MantaDB search is easy to do: just click the Search Database
button 
in
the MantaDB toolbar displayed in the Internet Explorer window. The Search Database
dialog box will present an area in which to enter the keywords for which
you wish to search and an area in which the results will be returned. Enter
up to eight words in the Key Words area and press the Find Now
button on the right of the box. The database will be searched and the URL,
title, first and last visit times and the rank of all matching pages will
be returned. Information is always returned to the summary screen below the
area in which the query is entered. Optionally, if the "Summary Screen Only"
option is not checked, more detailed results will also be launched into a web page.
Double click on the URL field (in either the summary or detailed results pages)
to go to the web page described.
The options panel to the right of the Key Words area indicates the type of search you would like to perform.
If you choose the Any Words option MantaDB will search the database for all pages that contain any of the
listed words. The pages found are ranked prior to being put on display for you. Pages containing more of the
words and/or having many occurrences of the words are given higher priority in the ranking. The All Words
option eliminates every page that does not contain all of the listed words. This option is useful to narrow down
a search if the Any Words option is returning too many results. The Advanced option allows combinations
of the Any Words and All Words options plus an additional option to eliminate pages containing certain words.
See below for more information on the Advanced search option.
MantaDB always performs leading string searches. Searching
on the word "fire" would, for example, return pages containing the words
"fire", "firefly" and "fireplace". There is no way to search for words
that end with or contain a particular word. For example, MantaDB cannot
return pages containing all words that end in "place". A future enhancement
will enable the option of having exact word matches.
Some Notes on the Advanced Search Option
Place a + character in front of words to eliminate all pages that do
not have that word. By default MantaDB will just rank the page higher if
it has the word.
Place a - character in front of words to eliminate all pages that contain
that word. This is useful if you wish to eliminate pages to narrow down
the returned list.
An Example Search
+york +broadway -tourist play musical
The above search would search the database for all pages that contained
both words "york" and "broadway", eliminating those with the word "tourist".
Those pages that also contained the words "play" or "musical" would be
ranked higher.
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