A content search returns documents that contain the text you specify. To do this, the documents must have been indexed. Check with your system administrator to see if documents in your object stores are indexed. The results can be ranked if you choose that option in the Search Designer options.
A content search finds words and phrases in the content of a document or its properties or both, depending on how your object store components are indexed. If the properties are indexed, your administrator determines which properties go into the indexed collection.
Property values must be formatted as text strings, not as numbers or dates. You do not specify the location of the text (content or properties). If the words appear in either area, the search finds the document. See Select object type for tips on creating Content searches.
NOTE
For content searches, you complete the View, Words/Phrases, and Modifiers columns. (If you don't choose a modifier, "None" is entered by default.) For search templates, you can leave the Words/Phrases column blank (unless View is set to Hidden or Read Only). See View Column for definitions of each View option.
Enter one or more words in the Words/Phrases column. The words can contain special characters.
Simply entering one word as your search criteria causes the search engine to find various forms of that word (stemmed variations). You can disable stemming and require matching capitalization using double quotes, look for patterns using * as a wildcard character, or exclude a word using ! at the beginning. See samples in the following table.
Desired search condition | Enter in Words/ Phrases field | Choose modifier |
---|---|---|
Search for a single word with the exact spelling and case-sensitivity. | "Word" | None |
Search for a single word without regard for case. | word | None |
Search for stemmed versions of a single word. | word | None |
Search for a word pattern using a wildcard character. See Using a wildcard character to the right. | w*d | None |
Exclude documents that have this word. | !word | None |
When you enter two or more words, you can specify a relationship between those words.
Desired search condition | Enter in Words/ Phrases field | Choose modifier |
---|---|---|
Search for a phrase with the exact spelling and case-sensitivity. | "Asian leaf frog" | None |
Search for words located near each other. See Notes below. | frog toad | Near |
Search for words located in the same sentence. See Notes below. | shed skin | Sentence |
Search for words located in the same paragraph. See Notes below. | color camouflage | Paragraph |
Search for any of the specified words or phrases. | "Costa Rican" flying tree frog | Any |
Search for all of the specified words or phrases. | frog chorus song | All |
Search for one or more words in an HTML or XML tag. (e.g., Header). See Notes below. | Malformed Frogs | In Zone : Header |
NOTE
If you know the Autonomy K2 query language, you can enter the complete structured query in the Words/Phrases field and choose the query language as the modifier. Your text will be passed to the Autonomy K2 search engine without checking or modification of any kind. You will need to know how your collections are configured so you use only the appropriate operators.
Another way to specify relationships between words is to enter search terms using two or more rows in the grid. Then specify AND or OR as the logical operator between the rows. Enter conditions in the appropriate order so you can specify the proper relationships (AND or OR) between contiguous rows. If necessary, use the Insert a Row and Delete a Row buttons, along with copy and paste, to move existing rows. To specify the relationship between contiguous rows, highlight them and click the And or Or buttons. See Condition relationships. Also see the text to the right on Multiple words or multiple rows.
By default, the search engine does not look for certain common words, called Stop Words. When the index is built, the stop words are not added to the collection so they can never be found.
If one or more words in your search requires a stop word, such as when you use the All or Near modifiers or the AND operator between lines, the search will fail, because these words will never appear in the index. See Autonomy K2 Stop Words for a list of these words.
As users add documents to object stores, the search engine indexes them. If many users are adding documents at the same time, there could be a short delay before the text and properties of some documents appear in the object store's index (called a "collection"). If a search does not find a document that has just been added, try the search a little later.
To enter special characters (like the Euro character, cent sign, etc.) in Windows, hold down the Alt key while typing the number on the numeric keypad. Num Lock must be activated.
The Windows Accessories, System Tools, Character Map utility shows the Alt key numeric equivalents, or you can copy text entered into Character Map and paste it into Search Designer.
On the Mac, use the Key Caps utility to enter special characters and then paste them into the text field. You can also enter them directly using the Option key.
Word stemming selects documents that include one or more variations of the search word you specify. For example, entering "film" returns documents containing films, filmed, filming, etc. This option is used by default when you do not use double-quotes around words.
Use an asterisk (*) to stand for zero or more letters, numbers, or underscore ( _ ) characters. For example, word* would find word or words.
Entering two words in one row with the All modifier is the same as entering two rows in the grid and connecting them with the AND operator. Similarly, using the Any modifier with multiple words on one row is the same as using OR with multiple rows in the grid.
NOTE If you use two or more rows connected with AND, the user must include something on at least two rows.
Also if you use two or more words on one row with Near, the user must keep two or more words in that row. If you use All, the user can leave only one word in the row.
The search engine sees hyphenated words as two separate words.