Search tips

These search tips give you valuable hints and tips on phrasing your searches and building your queries.

Terms

Search string are case-insensitive and are broken up into terms and operators. There are two types of terms: single terms and phrases.
  • Single terms - you search on a single word such as HTTP or SSL.
  • Phrases - you search on a group of words surrounded by quotation marks such as "interface process." You can also combine multiple terms with Boolean operators.

Escaping special characters

The following characters have special meaning within a search string:

+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \

To turn off the special meaning and search for the literal character, you must precede it with a backslash (\). For example to search for (1+1):2, use the query:

\(1\+1\)\:2

Attribute search

To find text within a specific attribute value, type the name of the attribute followed by a colon (:) and then the term you are looking for.

For example, to search only the problem synopsis for the phrase interface process, use the following search string:

problem_synopsis:"interface process"
Note: The attribute search is only valid for the term that it directly precedes, so the query problem_synsopsis:interface process only finds interface in the problem synopsis and searches for process in all attribute values.

The Attribute Search tab, on the Advanced Search dialog box, provides an alternate method of specifying a search within specific attributes. With this method, the attributes to be searched are selected from a list and no special syntax is needed. The search strings are only matched in the attributes with which they are paired.

For example, using interface process as the search string for the Synopsis attribute shows results with both interface and process in the Synopsis attributes.

Test modifiers

There are two types of test modifiers: Wildcard searches and proximity searches.

Boolean operators

With Boolean operators, terms are combined through logic operators. The valid operators are AND, OR, +, and -.
Note: All Boolean operators must be uppercase.

Grouping

Searching supports using parentheses to group clauses to form sub queries. This feature can be useful if you want to control the Boolean logic for a search.

To search for matches that include website and either SSL or HTTP (or both), use the query (HTTP OR SSL) AND website.

Doing so eliminates any confusion by making operator precedence explicit.

Attribute grouping

Search supports using parentheses to group multiple clauses to a single attribute value.

To search for a problem synopsis that contains both the word internal and the phrase process management, use the query problem_synopsis:(+internal +"process management").


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