About Boolean search

The Boolean search mode implements Boolean search. It lets users specify complex expressions describing the exact search criteria for their searches.

Endeca Server search operations use the All mode by default, which results in conjunctive searches. However, users often want more precise control over their exact search query.

For example, consider the following request: "Show me all records that match either red or blue and also match the word car."

To express this request, the following query is required: (red OR blue) AND car. The OR in this query is a disjunctive operator that matches all records that are either red or blue. This set is then intersected with the set of results for the word car and the result of that operation is returned from the Oracle Endeca Server.

Unlike the All and Any modes, Boolean search also lets users specify negation in their queries.

For example, the query camcorder AND NOT digital will search for all records in the data domain that have the word camcorder and will then remove all records that have the word digital from that set before returning the result.

red AND NOT (blue OR green)

As with other search query modes, you can also run Boolean search queries against search interfaces; however, they may only be run against a single search interface.

Finally, the colon (:) character is a key restrict operator that you can use to limit a search to a single attribute regardless of whether or not these attributes are included in the same search interface.