Use Your Content > Inquire > Query > Query Syntax

Query Syntax

This section describes the main query syntax that you can use for the Text part of queries.

For Boolean and proximity queries, you add operators to the text to specify the relationship that you want between the search terms. You can also use Brackets and other Special Characters in syntax.

Boolean Operators

Operator Description
AND Both terms must occur.
NOT The first term must occur, but not the second term.
OR One of the terms must occur, but not necessarily both.
EOR or XOR One of the terms must occur, but not both.

Proximity Operators

Operator Description
NEARN The terms must occur within N words of each other.
DNEARN The terms must occur within N words of each other, in the specified order.
WNEARN One of the terms must occur, but not necessarily both, and extra relevance is given when the terms occur within N words of each other.
YNEARN Both of the terms must occur, and extra relevance is given when the terms occur within N words of each other.
BEFORE Both terms must occur, and the first term must occur earlier in the document than the second term.
AFTER Both terms must occur, and the first term must occur later in the document than the second term.
XNEARN The terms must occur exactly N words apart.
SENTENCE The terms must occur in the same sentence.
SENTENCEN The terms must occur in the same sentence, and within N words of each other.
DSENTENCE The terms must occur in the same sentence in the specified order.
DSENTENCEN The terms must occur in the same sentence in the specified order, and within N words of each other.
PARAGRAPH The terms must occur in the same paragraph.
PARAGRAPHN The terms must occur in the same paragraph, and within N words of each other.
WHEN The first field and value must occur in the same XML segment as the second field and value.
NOTWHEN The first field and value must occur, but the second field and value must not occur in the same XML segment.
NOTE:

To use the SENTENCE and PARAGRAPH operators, you must have AdvancedPlus mode enabled.

Brackets

You can use parentheses () to define the order in which to apply Boolean and proximity operators. IDOL Server applies the expression inside the brackets first, and then the expression outside the brackets. You can use this option to return a very specific set of results.

Special Characters

The following characters have special syntactic meaning in the Text parameter of a query.

Syntax Description Example
Term:Field Field restriction. Text=cat:TITLE
* Wildcard character, which expands to any number of characters. Text=rollersk*
? Wildcard character, which expands to one character. Text=Mi?rotech
Term[NN] Apply a weight of NN to the specified Term. Text=cat[100]
Term[N:O] Apply an occurrence restriction to the specified Term. Text=cat[5:10]
"Terms" The exact phrase in quotations must occur. Text="phrase search"
~Term Case-sensitive search for Term (AdvancedCaseSearch only). Text=~iPhone
Term~ Search for Term without stemming. Text=SHOP~

Ignore Special Characters

Other Operators

Operator Description
DREFUZZY(Term) Returns terms that have similar spelling to the specified Term.
SOUNDEX(Term) Returns terms that are phonetically similar to the specified Term.

 


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