Search Case Sensitivity

If you pass a mixed case entry (mixed upper and lower case), case sensitivity is applied to the search. If you pass all upper or all lower case, case insensitivity is assumed.

Search String Matches
wddx Wddx WDDX wDDx . . .
Wddx Wddx
WDDX WDDX

Multiple word searches

Words separated by spaces behave as if they had a logical AND between them. Words separated by commas behave as if they had a logical OR between them.

Search String Matches
wddx, cfas documents which have either wddx OR cfas somewhere in the document
wddx cfas documents which have both wddx AND cfas somewhere in the document

Wildcards

Wildcards '*' and '?' will match 0 to n and one characters respectively.

Search String Matches
behav* behaving, behave etc.
behav? behave
*site HomeSite, WebSite etc.
?ite kite, Site etc.

Note that wildcard searches appearing on the left side of a string tend to be expensive.

NEAR Operator

Selects documents containing specified search terms within close proximity to each other. Document scores are calculated based on the relative number of words between search terms. For example, if the search expression includes two words, and those words occur next to each other in a document (so that the region size is two words long), then the score assigned to that document is 1.0. Thus, the document with the smallest possible region containing all search terms always receives the highest score. Documents whose search terms are not within 1000 words of each other are not selected, since the search terms are probably too far apart to be meaningful within the context of the document.

The NEAR operator is similar to the other proximity operators in the sense that the search words you enter must be found within close proximity of one another. However, unlike other proximity operators, the NEAR operator calculates relative proximity and assigns scores based on its calculations.

To retrieve relevance-ranked documents that contain stemmed variations of the words "war" and "peace" within close proximity to each other, you can enter the following:

war <NEAR> peace

NEAR/N Operator

Selects documents containing two or more words within N number of words of each other, where N is an integer. Document scores are calculated based on the relative distance of the specified words when they are separated by N words or less.

For example, if the search expression NEAR/5 is used to find two words within five words of each other, a document that has the specified words within three words of each other is scored higher than a document that has the specified words within five words of each other.

The N variable can be an integer between 1 and 1,024, where NEAR/1 searches for two words that are next to each other. If N is 1,000 or above, you must specify its value without commas, as in NEAR/1000. You can specify multiple search terms using multiple instances of NEAR/N, as long as the value of N is the same.

For example, to retrieve relevance-ranked documents that contain stemmed variations of the words "commute," "bicycle," "train," and "bus" within 10 words of each other, you can enter the following:

commute <NEAR/10> bicycle <NEAR/10> train <NEAR/10> bus

You can use the NEAR/N operator with the ORDER modifier to perform ordered proximity searches. For more information about the ORDER modifier, see "ORDER Modifier" in this appendix.

OR Operator

Selects documents that show evidence of at least one of your search elements. Documents selected using the OR operator are relevance-ranked.

To select documents that contain stemmed variations of the word "election" or the phrases "national elections" or "senatorial race", you can enter the following:

election OR national elections OR senatorial race

Only those documents that contain at least one of the search elements, or a stemmed variation of at least one of them, are retrieved and ranked according to their scores.

PARAGRAPH Operator

Selects documents that include all of the search elements you specify within a paragraph. Valid search elements are two or more words or phrases. You can specify search elements in a sequential or a random order. Documents are retrieved as long as search elements appear in the same paragraph.

To retrieve relevance-ranked documents that contain stemmed variations of the word "drug" and the phrase "cancer treating" in the same paragraph, you can enter the following:

drug <PARAGRAPH> cancer treating

To search for three or more words or phrases, you must use the PARAGRAPH operator between each word or phrase.

You can use the PARAGRAPH operator with the ORDER modifier to perform ordered proximity searches. For more information about the ORDER modifier, see "ORDER Modifier" in this appendix.

PHRASE Operator

Selects documents that include a phrase you specify. A phrase is a grouping of two or more words that occur next to each other in a specific order.

By default, two or more words separated by a space are considered to be a phrase in simple syntax. In addition, two or more words enclosed in double quotes are considered to be a phrase. To retrieve relevance-ranked documents that contain the phrase "mission oak," you can enter any of the following:

mission oak

"mission oak"

mission <PHRASE> oak

<PHRASE> (mission, oak)

SENTENCE Operator

Selects documents that include all of the words you specify within a sentence. You can specify search elements in a sequential or a random order. Documents are retrieved as long as search elements appear in the same sentence.

To retrieve relevance -ranked documents that contain stemmed variations of the words "American," and "innovation" within the same sentence, you can enter the following:

american <SENTENCE> innovation

<SENTENCE> (american, innovation)

You can use the SENTENCE operator with the ORDER modifier to perform ordered proximity searches. For more information about the ORDER modifier, see "ORDER Modifier" in this appendix.

STARTS Operator

Selects documents by matching the character string you specify with the starting characters of the values stored in a specific document field. For example, assume a document field named REPORTER has been defined. To retrieve documents written by Jack, Jackson, and Jacks, you can enter the following:

REPORTER <STARTS> jack

SUBSTRING Operator

Selects documents by matching the character string you specify with a portion of the strings of the values stored in a specific document field. The characters that comprise the string can occur at the beginning of a field value, within a field value, or at the end of a field value.

For example, assume a document field named TITLE has been defined. To retrieve documents whose titles contain words such as "solution," "resolution," "solve," and "resolve," you can enter the following:

TITLE <SUBSTRING> sol

WILDCARD Operator

Selects documents that contain matches to a wildcard character string. The WILDCARD operator lets you define a wildcard string, which can be used to locate related word matches in documents. A wildcard string consists of special characters. For example, to retrieve documents that contain words such as, "pharmaceutical," "pharmacology," and "pharmacodynamics," you can enter the following:

pharmac*

Documents are not relevance-ranked unless the MANY modifier is used, as in:

<MANY> pharmac*

The wildcard characters "*" and "?" automatically enable wildcard searching. To use other constructs, use the WILDCARD operator explicitly with any of the characters below.

Character
Function
?
Specifies one of any alphanumeric character, as in ?an, which locates "ran," "pan," "can," and "ban." It is not necessary to specify the WILDCARD operator when you use the question mark. The question mark is ignored in a set ([ ]) or in an alternative pattern ({ }).
*
Specifies zero or more of any alphanumeric character, as in corp*, which locates "corporate," "corporation," "corporal," and "corpulent." It is not necessary to specify the WILDCARD operator when you use the asterisk; you should not use the asterisk to specify the first character of a wildcard string. The asterisk is ignored in a set ([ ]) or in an alternative pattern ({ }).
[ ]
Specifies one of any character in a set, as in <WILDCARD> `c[auo]t`, which locates "cat," "cut," and "cot." You must enclose the word that includes a set in backquotes (`), and there can be no spaces in a set.
{ }
Specifies one of each pattern separated by a comma, as in
<WILDCARD> `bank{s,er,ing}`, which locates "banks," "banker," and "banking." You must enclose the word that includes a pattern in backquotes (`), and there can be no spaces in a set.
^
Specifies one of any character not in the set, as in <WILDCARD> `st[^oa]ck`, which excludes "stock" and "stack" but locates "stick" and "stuck." The caret (^) must be the first character after the left bracket ([) that introduces a set.
-
Specifies a range of characters in a set, as in <WILDCARD> `c[a-r]t`, which locates every three-letter word from "cat" to "crt."

WORD Operator

Selects documents that include one or more instances of a word you specify. For example, to search for documents that contain the word "rhetoric," without also considering the words "rhetorical" and "rhetorician," you can enter the following:

<WORD> rhetoric

Documents are not relevance-ranked unless the MANY modifier is used, as in:

<MANY><WORD> rhetoric





Modifier Reference

Modifiers are used in conjunction with operators. When specified, a modifier changes the standard behavior of an operator in some way. For example, you can use the CASE modifier with an operator to specify that the case of the search word you enter be considered a search element as well. Modifiers include CASE, MANY, NOT, and ORDER, each of which is described below.

CASE Modifier

Use the CASE modifier with the WORD or WILDCARD operator to perform a case-sensitive search, based on the case of the word or phrase specified.

To use the CASE modifier, you simply enter the search word or phrase as you wish it to appear in retrieved documents - in all uppercase letters, in mixed uppercase and lowercase letters, or in all lowercase letters.

For example, to retrieve documents that contain the word "Apple" in mixed uppercase and lowercase letters, you can enter the following:

<CASE> <WORD> Apple

Only those documents that contain the word "Apple" will be selected. Occurrences of "apple," "apples," or "APPLE" will not be selected.

When mixed uppercase and lowercase characters are included in a query, the search engine finds case-sensitive matches.

MANY Modifier

Counts the density of words, stemmed variations, or phrases in a document, and produces a relevance-ranked score for retrieved documents. The more occurrences of a word, stem, or phrase proportional to the amount of document text, the higher the score of that document when retrieved. Because the MANY modifier considers density in proportion to document text, a longer document that contains more occurrences of a word can score lower than a shorter document that contains fewer occurrences. You can use the MANY modifier with these operators: WORD, WILDCARD, STEM, SOUNDEX, PHRASE, SENTENCE, PARAGRAPH.

For example, to select documents based on the density of stemmed variations of the word "apple," you can enter the following:

<MANY> <STEM> apple

To select documents based on the density of the phrase "mission oak," you can enter the following:

<MANY> mission oak

The MANY modifier cannot be used with AND, OR, ACCRUE, or relational operators.

NOT Modifier

Use the NOT modifier with a word or phrase to exclude documents that show evidence of that word or phrase. For example, to select only documents that contain the words "cat" and "mouse" but not the word "dog," you can enter the following:

cat <AND> mouse <AND> <NOT> dog

You can use the NOT modifier only with the operators AND and OR.

ORDER Modifier

Use the ORDER modifier to specify that search elements must occur in the same order in which they were specified in the query. If search values do not occur in the specified order in a document, the document is not selected. You can use the ORDER modifier with these operators: PARAGRAPH, SENTENCE, and NEAR/N.

Always place the ORDER modifier just before the operator. The following syntax examples show how you can use either simple syntax or explicit syntax to retrieve documents containing the word "president" followed by the word "washington" in the same paragraph:

Simple syntax:

president <ORDER><PARAGRAPH> washington

Explicit syntax:

<ORDER><PARAGRAPH> ("president", "washington")

To search for documents containing the words "diver," "kills," "shark" in that order within 20 words of each other, use one of the following queries:

diver <ORDER><NEAR/20> kills <ORDER><NEAR/20> shark

<ORDER> <NEAR/20> (diver, kills, shark)

You can use the NEAR/N operator with the ORDER modifier to duplicate the behavior of the PHRASE operator. For example, to search for documents containing the phrase "world wide web," you can use the following syntax:

world <ORDER><NEAR/1> wide <ORDER><NEAR/1> web