Search Help

The following information is provided for those wanting to perform specific searches on content available at ITSRegistry.org. Using the information below will help you narrow your results.

In technical jargon, a search is called a query.

A query is broken up into terms and operators. There are two types of terms: Single Terms and Phrases.

A Single Term is a single word such as “furniture” or “class”.

A Phrase is a group of words surrounded by double quotes such as “tpeg definition ”.

Multiple terms can be combined together with Boolean operators to form a more complex query (see below).

Lucene supports modifying query terms to provide a wide range of searching options.

Wildcard Searches

Lucene supports single and multiple character wildcard searches.

To perform a single character wildcard search use the “?” symbol.

To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the “*” symbol.

The single character wildcard search looks for terms that match that with the single character replaced. For example, to search for “fell” or “felt” you can use the search:

     fel?

Multiple character wildcard searches looks for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for “test”, “tests” or “tester”, you can use the search:

     test*

You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a term.

     tp*g

Note: You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.

Fuzzy Searches

Lucene supports fuzzy searches. To do a fuzzy search use the tilde, “~”, symbol at the end of a Single word Term. For example to search for a term similar in spelling to “roam” use the fuzzy search:

     roam~

This search will find terms like roam and foam

Note:Terms found by the fuzzy search will automatically get a boost factor of 0.2 (see below for more information on boost factors).

Proximity Searches

Lucene supports finding words that are within a specified distance. To do a proximity search use the tilde, “~”, symbol at the end of a Phrase. For example to search for a “local” and “authority” within 10 words of each other in a document use the search:

     “local authority”~10    

Boosting a Term

Lucene provides the relevance level of matching documents based on the terms found. To boost a term use the caret, “^”, symbol with a boost factor (a number) at the end of the term you are searching. The higher the boost factor, the more relevant the term will be.

Boosting allows you to control the relevance of a document by boosting its term. For example, if you are searching for

     device control

and you want the term “control” to be more relevant boost it using the ^ symbol along with the boost factor next to the term. You would type:

     device control^4

This will make documents with the term control appear more relevant. You can also boost Phrase Terms as in the example:

     “device control”^4 “car park”

By default, the boost factor is 1. Although, the boost factor must be positive, it can be less than 1 (i.e. .2)

Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. Lucene supports AND, “+”, OR, NOT and “-” as Boolean operators (Note: Boolean operators must be ALL CAPS).

OR

The OR operator is the default conjunction operator. This means that if there is no Boolean operator between two terms, the OR operator is used. The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document.

To search for documents that contain either “device control” or just “control” use the query:

     “cctv device” control

or

     “cctv device” OR control

AND

The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document.

To search for documents that contain “cctv device” and “utmc” use the query:

     “cctv device” AND “utmc”

'+'

The “+” or required operator requires that the term after the “+” symbol exist somewhere in a field of a single document.

To search for documents that must contain “cctv” and may contain “device” use the query:

     +cctv device

NOT

The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT.

To search for documents that contain “cctv devices” but not “utmc” use the query:

     “cctv device” NOT “utmc”

Note: The NOT operator cannot be used with just one term. For example, the following search will return no results:

     NOT “cctv device”

'-'

The “-” or prohibit operator excludes documents that contain the term after the “-” symbol.

To search for documents that contain “cctv device” but not “package” use the query:

     “cctv device” -“package”

Lucene supports using parentheses to group clauses to form sub queries. This can be very useful if you want to control the boolean logic for a query.

To search for either “cctv” or “device” and “control” use the query:

     (cctv OR device) AND control

This eliminates any confusion and makes sure you that control must exist and either term cctv or device may exist.

Lucene supports escaping special characters that are part of the query syntax. The current list special characters are

+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ “ ~ * ? : \

To escape these character use the \ before the character. For example to search for (1+1):2 use the query:

     \(1\+1\)\:2