Siebel Search Administration Guide > Overview of Siebel Search >

Search Operators and Connectives for Siebel Search


In addition to AND and OR, and their symbolic equivalents ampersand (&) and vertical bar (|), Siebel Search can accept other operators, which are summarized in Table 3.

Table 3. Search Operators and Connectives
Operators and Connectives
Effect

AND, and, (ampersand) &

Placed between terms, returns only items containing both terms.

OR, or, (vertical bar) |

Placed between terms, returns items containing either term or both terms.

NOT

The NOT operator used between two query terms can be used to limit the results in a query to records that contain the first term, but not the second term. Indices are built with one field mapping to a SUMMARY column, and all other fields or document text mapping to the EXTERNAL_TEXT column in the index. Queries with the NOT operator apply to both the External Text and Summary columns in the search index, and return records that satisfy the search criteria for both the name and summary fields.

(Asterisk) *

Placed anywhere in a string, returns items containing the string, or containing the string plus any additional characters at the position at which it appears, up to (or beginning with) a space.

(Question mark) ?

Placed anywhere in a string, returns items containing the characters specified in the string, such that any character may appear at the location of the question mark.

(Quotation marks) ""

Surrounds a string that, unless modified by a wildcard, must be matched exactly. Allows searching for groups of words in their exact order.

(Parentheses) ()

Specifies that the terms and operators surrounded by the parentheses be processed first, regardless of the default processing order.

NEAR, near

Specifies that the search for the term preceding or following NEAR be governed by the proximity in characters. This criterion is specified in the Options section of the Siebel Search Contents dialog box if Siebel Advanced Search is licensed. Note: using NEAR in a query that also contains grouping causes an error.

(Brackets) []

Used to specify Thesaurus searching options if Siebel Advanced Search is licensed.

White space character

In a pattern the space separates terms that must appear in a sequence. For example, when you enter "on line" (with quotes), this pattern would match any occurrence of the word ON followed by spaces, tabs, new lines, or any other white space characters in any combination, followed by the word LINE. Quotes are necessary when using white spaces between terms, because without them the terms are treated as different words.

(Hyphen) -

The hyphen character is treated as an optional punctuation character. The nonhyphenated forms include spaces or anything that is interpreted as a punctuation character in Fulcrum.

(Backslash) \

This is an escape character that, when placed immediately before any special pattern character (hyphen, *, backslash, ?, or space) in a pattern, causes the special pattern character to be interpreted literally.

Siebel Search Administration Guide Copyright © 2009, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Legal Notices.