Federated Query Server: Help: Search Syntax

Search Syntax

This page describes how to use the search forms on this site.

For more information about the Livelink ECM - Federated Query Server product, see the About page.

To perform a search, enter some words or phrases into the "Search For" box, and press the "Search" button. You can enter Boolean expressions into the search box - see below for details.

To customize your search, click the "Customize" link below the search box. You can then choose appropriate options from the "Match", "Number of Results", "Result Clustering", "Result Style" and "Stop Searching" drop down lists. You can also select the search engines that you want to query.

The following sections describe the items on the search and customize pages:


Search For

Enter a query in the form of a single word or multiple words, with or without Boolean operators (e.g. AND, OR, NOT). Federated Query Server will automatically translate your query string into the appropriate syntax for each of the search engines.

The following table lists the search operators that Federated Query Server supports:

Operator Description
"..." Searches for the words within the double quotes as an exact phrase
AND Returns results that contain both of the surrounding words or phrases
OR Returns results that contain either of the surrounding words or phrases
NOT Returns results that contain the word or phrase before the operator, but that do not contain the word or phrase following the operator
NEAR Returns results that contain both of the surrounding words or phrases in close proximity to each other
(...) Parantheses allow you to construct complex queries that have several logical units, for example the query (bacon AND eggs) NOT "Kevin Bacon" will return results which contain both of the words "bacon" and "eggs", but not the phrase "Kevin Bacon"
* Replaces any number of characters in a word, for example the query Radio* will return results that contain any word beginning in "Radio"

If a search engine does not support a particular operator, Federated Query Server will use the next most general operator instead.

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Match

The "Match" drop down list allows you to specify how Federated Query Server will join the words and phrases in your query. It does this by inserting a Boolean operator between every pair of words or phrases that are not already separated by an operator.

All of the search terms-Uses the AND operator
Any of the search terms-Uses the OR operator

If you use Boolean operators in your query, they override the selection in the "Match" drop down list.

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Number of Results

The "Number of Results" drop down list allows you to select the maximum number of results each search engine returns.

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Result Clustering

The "Result Clustering" drop down list allows you to choose which type of clustering Federated Query Server will perform.

Clustering is a sorting method that takes the search results and groups them according to topic, site location, or both. If you choose a clustering option, Federated Query Server creates a linked list at the top of the result page so that you can easily navigate to the group of results most pertinent to your query.

None -Federated Query Server returns a single merged list of results, with no clustering
By content -Results are grouped according to their content. Common phrases in the result titles and summaries are used as headings for the result clusters
By site -Results are grouped according to their location. The result URLs are used to form site names, which are then used as headings for the result clusters
By content and site-Results are grouped according to either their content or their location, whichever has most in common with other results in the result list

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Result Style

The "Result Style" drop down list allows you to choose the style in which results are displayed by Federated Query Server.

Long -Displays the relevance score, title, summary, source and URL of each result
Medium-Displays the relevance score, title and summary of each result
Short -Displays just the title of each result

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Stop Searching

The "Stop Searching" drop down list allows you to choose the maximum time that Federated Query Server will spend waiting for the search engines to send a response.

After [N] seconds-Waits for a maximum of [N] seconds
Never -Waits for ever

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Search Engines

By default, Federated Query Server will broadcast your query to all of the search engines listed on the customize page. However, you can choose to query only certain search engines by selecting only the checkboxes next to those engines you wish to query. Buttons are provided which select and clear every search engine checkbox.

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