The Advanced Search provides a "Raw" option. This allows you to write your own queries against the internal search engine. This section defines how you can accomplish this powerful task. To see additional examples of Raw Search queries, please reference the Raw Search Cookbook.
Terms
A “raw” 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 "test" or "hello.” A Phrase is a group of words surrounded by double quotes such as "hello dolly." Multiple terms can be combined together with Boolean operators to form a more complex query (see below).
Fields
NetX supports fielded data. When performing a search, you can specify a field. You can search any field by typing the field name followed by a colon ":" and then the term you are looking for.
If you want to find the document entitled "The Right Way" which contains the text "don't go this way," you can enter:
title:"The Right Way" AND text:go
Note: The field is only valid for the term that it directly precedes, so the query:
title:Do it right
Will only find "Do" in the title field.
Term modifiers
NetX supports modifying query terms to provide a wide range of searching options.
Wildcard searches
NetX supports single and multiple character wildcard searches within single terms (not within phrase queries). 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 the word with the single character replaced. For example, to search for "text" or "test" you can use the search:
te?t
Multiple character wildcard searches looks for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for test, tests or tester, you can use the search:
You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a term:
test*
Note: You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.
Fuzzy searches
NetX supports fuzzy searches based on the Levenshtein Distance, or Edit Distance algorithm. 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 foam and roams.
An additional (optional) parameter can specify the required similarity. The value is between 0 and 1, with a value closer to 1 only terms with a higher similarity will be matched. For example:
roam~0.8
The default that is used if the parameter is not given is 0.5.
Proximity searches
NetX supports finding words are a within a specific distance away. To do a proximity search use the tilde, "~" symbol at the end of a Phrase. For example, to search for a "denise" and "nigel" within 10 words of each other in a document use the search:
"nigel denise"~10
Range searches
Range queries allow one to match documents whose field(s) values are between the lower and upper bound specified by the Range Query. Range Queries can be inclusive or exclusive of the upper and lower bounds; inclusive range queries are denoted by square brackets, while exclusive range queries are denoted by curly brackets. Sorting is done lexicographically.
modDate:[20020101000000 TO 20030101999999]
This will find documents whose modDate fields have values between 20020101000000 and 20030101999999, inclusively. The format for date fields is [YYYYMMDDHHMMSS]; Year, Month, Day, Hour, Minutes, Seconds. Note that Range queries are not reserved for date fields. You could also use range queries with non-date fields:
title:{Aida TO Carmen}
This will find all documents whose titles are between Aida and Carmen, but not including Aida and Carmen.
Boosting a term
NetX 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:
nigel denise
and you want the term "nigel" to be more relevant boost it using the ^ symbol along with the boost factor next to the term. For example:
nigel^4 denise
This will make documents with the term nigel appear more relevant. You can also boost Phrase Terms as in the example:
"nigel denise"^4 "Denise NetXposure"
By default, the boost factor is 1. Although the boost factor must be positive, it can be less than 1 (e.g. 0.2).
Boolean operators
Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. NetX supports AND, "+,” OR, NOT and "-" as Boolean operators. (Note: Boolean operators must be ALL CAPS).
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. This is equivalent to a union using sets. The symbol || can be used in place of the word OR. To search for documents that contain either "nigel denise" or just "nigel" use the query:
"nigel denise" Nigel
or
"nigel denise" OR nigel
The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document. This is equivalent to an intersection using sets. The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND.
To search for documents that contain "nigel denise" and "Denise NetXposure" use the query:
"nigel denise" AND "Denise NetXposure"
Required
The "+" or required operator requires that the "+" symbol exist somewhere in a field of a single document. To search for documents that must contain "nigel" and may contain "NetXposure" use the query:
+nigel NetXposure
The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. This is equivalent to a difference using sets. The symbol ! can be used in place of the word NOT. To search for documents that contain "nigel denise" but not "Denise NetXposure" use the query:
"nigel denise" NOT "Denise NetXposure"
Note: The NOT operator cannot be used with just one term. For example, the following search will return no results:
NOT "nigel denise"
Exclude
The "-" or prohibit operator excludes documents that contain the term after the "-" symbol. To search for documents that contain "nigel denise" but not "Denise NetXposure" use the query:
"nigel denise" -"Denise NetXposure"
Grouping
NetX 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 "nigel" or "denise" and "website" use the query:
(nigel OR denise) AND website
This eliminates any confusion and makes sure that website must exist and either term nigel or denise may exist.
Field grouping
NetX supports using parentheses to group multiple clauses to a single field. To search for a title that contains both the word "return" and the phrase "pink panther" use the query:
title:(+return +"pink panther")
Escaping special characters
NetX supports escaping special characters that are part of the query syntax. The current list of special characters is:
+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \
To escape these characters, use the \ before the character. For example to search for (1+1):2, use the query:
\(1\+1\)\:2